


So Loud & So Clear

by StilesBastille24



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bucky figures himself out, Bucky is a fan of his metal arm, Bucky is not impressed with Captain America's uniform, Get Together, M/M, POV Bucky Barnes, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Slow Build, memory recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-25
Updated: 2016-02-25
Packaged: 2018-05-23 04:26:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6104881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StilesBastille24/pseuds/StilesBastille24
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky had been careful, after all, leaving no trace of his comings and goings. It was horrendously disappointing to know that Rogers had found him. Bucky was a lot better than getting caught by a guy who wore the American flag as a onesie. He just really was.</p><p>“Don’t you – Bucky – Bucky,” Rogers started, and to Bucky’s growing horror, it looked like Rogers was on the verge of some type of emotional eclipse. Anger, sadness, something, and Bucky wanted nothing to do with it. </p><p>“Hate to break it to you, bud, but I don’t remember ever living here and I don’t remember you.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Loud & So Clear

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write something with post-Winter Soldier Bucky where Bucky doesn't and hasn't ever felt he is machine. After I started writing this, I found this fanastic [post](http://soldieronbarnes.tumblr.com/post/132137323039/brendaonao3-bridge-agent-seabassbarnes-the-way) which sums up how I think about Bucky as the Winter Soldier. This story took 6 really long months with heavy editing and re-writes. I'm so relieved it is finally done. 
> 
> Title from Coldplay's song Shiver because it feels really well with the story for me.

He didn’t know who he was, he didn’t know why he was, and he didn’t know who anyone else was, but he did know that for one brief moment, he had remembered something. He had to have remembered something because he no longer remembered anything. 

That was how it worked. One second, one blissful moment of a fragment of a memory and then they would rip it out, tear it screaming and hemorrhaging from his memory until he was left with nothing once more. 

Rumlow was watching him again, his dark eyes nervously ticking over in his direction, smooth enough that it looked like regular surveillance of the room. It wasn’t. He was used to the way people looked at him, used to the things they called him, and the way Rumlow was looking at him now meant that he was one of the people that called him ‘the Weapon.’/p>

It wasn’t a name. It was a label. Just like ‘the Asset’ or ‘the Winter Soldier.’ They weren’t names, they were a permanent marker etched onto whatever demolition technique they wanted him to utilize. 

The Weapon was just that. There was no finesse. There was only aggression and the kill. Kill at all costs, cost to self, cost to others, just get the target. 

The Asset had a little more value. The Asset should attempt to minimize damage to self, self being the mechanical arm. Beyond that, the objective was the same as the Weapon, collateral damage didn’t matter. 

The Winter Soldier, though, was a different breed entirely. The Winter Soldier was to be an assassin. Able to slide in and out unnoticed with minimal damage except to the target. 

When there were slip-ups, there was swift and vicious punishment from Hydra. He had learned to embody each label as fluidly as possible, because Hydra didn’t accept slip-ups. They didn’t view him as anything beyond a tool to be used and weaponized. As such, if he failed, the tool needed to be recalibrated, and recalibration, as he remembered no matter how many times they pulled everything else out of his mind, was the single most painful thing in his existence. 

If Hydra had ever thought he had humanity, that had long since been left by the wayside. Some days he wasn’t entirely certain he was human anymore. Other days, he thought he could take them all out and escape. Most days, though, he resigned himself to the cyclical nature of his life. Pain, death, re-birth, ad nauseum. 

Until one day, a Level Six target in a ridiculous spandex suit called him ‘Bucky’ and there was no one left to rip out the memories that started to trickle in.

XxXxX

He was holing up in an abandoned apartment in a sketchy section of Brooklyn. He didn’t know why he chose Brooklyn. He’d been in DC when the operation went under. When he’d dragged the fucking idiot in the star spangled costume ashore in DC. Left him to dry out on the side of the Potomac. Only regretted it for a moment.

Not the saving, because that was the only choice he had. He couldn’t let someone that felt like a memory sink to the bottom of the river to be lost forever. So he’d jumped in after him, lungs burning as he swam deeper into the cold water, chunks of burning debris plunging down around them. The socket of his metal arm had ached for hours after, from carrying the target’s lifeless body to the surface and then to land. 

The pain had been worth it. One tiny glimpse of a memory, left breathing on the shores of the Potomac; and that was what he regretted for a moment, the leaving. Leaving the memory there, because it had sparked an unraveling in his mind. Subtle at first, like silent film clips that had been lost and fragmented over time, but enough to start putting pieces together. 

Pieces like the name Bucky. That’s what the guy had called him after all. Not once, but twice, because even though they’d meant to burn it out of him, that memory resurfaced. Standing across from the guy, face mask fallen to the pavement, the guy’s wide shocked eyes as he took in Bucky’s face. 

Now Bucky was living in some shitty empty studio apartment with pieces ripped from magazines and newspapers littering one water-stained wall. Pieces he was hoping would form a picture that he could follow, that he could map out who he used to be on. 

For now, he had the name Bucky. A stupid fucking name, but it was his and that made it the best fucking name he could possibly have. 

Jesus. Years, decades, of being referred to by nothing more than a label and he had actually started to believe he never had a name, that maybe he hadn’t been born at all, but rather created in some pain infused lab; started to believe that nothing had ever truly been his, that he was someone’s creation and property. 

But he wasn’t. He had a name and it was Bucky. The fucking idiot in the Potomac was some freakish creation of his own though. Thawed out of ice. And Bucky thought he had it bad, electrocuted and put in cold storage every few days, weeks, months - least he hadn’t been on ice for seventy years. 

There was a creak on the floorboards outside the apartment and Bucky’s attention snapped to the door. Nobody came around here, except for junkies looking for a good place to get high. The blood stains he’d smeared near the entrance of the building had been a good enough deterrent so far though. The wound on his right arm had only taken an hour to heal and it had been worth it for the peace and quiet. 

Now though, the floorboards were protesting underneath someone’s shifting body weight. Bucky tensed, metal hand going for one of the knives strapped to his chest. Fucking hell. He wasn’t in the mood to murder some homeless asshole today. Not when he’d finally managed to drag up an article on the guy, Steve Rogers, that included something beyond his time in the ice and epic sexless romance with Agent Peggy Carter. 

And hell, that sexless romance was getting exhausting in its rehashing. Bucky had looked into her, the Carter woman, and she was fucking fierce in her own right. Why the idiots who wrote about Rogers felt that she was only worth mentioning as a love interest, Bucky didn’t understand.

Hydra would have adored Peggy, if she had played on their team, wicked smart and brutal if need be. That’s what Hydra liked, although they leaned more towards brute force than swift cunning, but every power hunger organization had its flaws. 

Bucky stood from his crouch as he heard the tread of footsteps approach the rickety, rotting staircase that led to the second floor. He scowled. This person was a complete asshole, ignoring the blood warning. Bucky was going to have to set up fucking triggers to sink the floorboards before anyone could get to the stairs after this. He hadn’t taken up in this shithole to have visitors. 

The first step gave a horrific moan of agony as the intruder dared to place his weight on it. Bucky snarled, flipping his knife in agitation before approaching the apartment door. If the asshole managed to make it all the way to the second floor without breaking his neck on the questionable stairs, Bucky would slice his throat and drag his body to bleed out at the foot of the stairs. That should keep any other idiots from bothering to explore his rotting ruins. 

The footsteps carried on, although more carefully now, inching progress upwards. Bucky twisted the door handle, easing it open a few millimeters to better enable his sudden attack. There was a sigh as the intruder finally made it to the second floor landing. 

Bucky tightened his hold on his knife preparing for the oncoming attack. 

A footstep creaked its way in Bucky’s direction. His foot edged the door slightly more open. A car horn blared on the street below. Bucky shut down all of his senses not focused on the immediate threat. 

The intruder was breathing heavily, as though the stairs had been an exertion. An older man or woman then, or possibly unused to exercise, would be easier to take them down. The intruder paused outside the first door on the landing. Bucky rolled his eyes. Asshole was really going to make Bucky come out and kill him?

Then a tentative voice, half whispered and wholly desperate, “Bucky?”

Fucking hell. 

Bucky winced, pain lancing through his temples as a flash of idiot Steve Rogers echoing the same question, face lined with disbelief, played through his memory. So Rogers wasn’t breathing heavy because of exertion but rather hope. Fat lot of good that was going to do him. 

Bucky weighed his options. Leap out the window and leave the evidence of his time spent and current focus plastered to his walls. Knock Rogers out and drag his unconscious body to an inconspicuous location. Allow himself to be found. 

All of the unimportant information ramped back into focus. The grinding noise of a car engine in desperate need of a tune up on the street below. The lone air conditioner on the building that abutted this one on the fritz, coughing and hacking up airflow.

Bucky grimaced. Steve Rogers had the worst fucking timing. With a disgusted sigh, Bucky kicked open the door to the apartment and easily dodged the hand fretfully reaching to ensnare him. 

He hiked an unimpressed brow at his unwelcome guest. Rogers gaped at him, hand still outstretched, fingers unclenched but searching for something to hold onto. Bucky waited what he felt was a reasonable ten seconds before saying, “What the fuck do you want?”

Rogers blinked, his whole body stuttering back into motion as if he was a computer rebooting. “Bucky?” he asked again, disbelief evident in the slacked posture of his shoulders and jaw. 

“That’s what you call me, right?” Bucky prompted, tone purposefully confrontational. 

Bucky had never in his patchwork memory met someone who didn’t want to use or abuse him in some scarring way or another. He highly doubted, for all of Rogers commendations and no longer being an ice sculpture, that he would be any different. All people had a price at which they would either buy or sell another person for their own gain. If Rogers had found him, then he’d probably found a buyer for a person of Bucky’s specific abilities. 

He wondered, briefly, what label Rogers would use. ‘Bucky’ wasn’t a label that was going to sell. Maybe something flashier, like ‘The Metal Fist’ or ‘Murder Eyes.’ He’d been referred to as both by the lower members of Hydra on several occasions that floated around unconnected in his memory. 

Rogers though, was still gaping, sucking air into his lungs like an asthmatic. That jogged something in Bucky’s memory, or at least, it tried to, but there was no give, and his memories stayed stubbornly locked in place. For once, Bucky was actually grateful. Now was not the time to be falling prey to the sudden onset of a memory flash.

Right now, Bucky had a spandex wearing asshole to deal with. Not that Rogers currently was wearing spandex, apparently he decided to go with something more inconspicuous when dropping by hideouts uninvited. 

“Did you come to enjoy the view, because, pal, I gotta tell you, not a whole hell of a lot going on here,” Bucky said, gesturing widely with his metal arm at the disarray of torn wallpaper and threadbare, molding carpet that depreciated the hallway. 

Rogers shook his head, as if trying to dislodge his confusion. “You – you’re – you’re really here.”

Bucky hadn’t used facial expressions to convey more than blatant disappointment in the world he was forced to inhabit and varying degrees of ‘you’re about to die’ in more time than he could conceivably understand. Therefore, he had to hope rather than know that he was broadcasting extreme vibes of ‘are you fucking serious’ in Rogers direction. 

If Rogers’ grasping fingers were anything to go by, Bucky had failed miserably. He let this roll off him easily, he had a lot of humanity to be catching up on, with no one there to shock him into amnesia now. 

“And so are you, somehow.” Bucky looked pointedly at Rogers, waiting for any type of explanation. 

Bucky had been careful, after all, leaving no trace of his comings and goings. It was horrendously disappointing to know that Rogers had found him. Bucky was a lot fucking better than getting caught by a guy who wore the American flag as a onesie. He just really fucking was. 

“Don’t you – Bucky – Bucky,” Rogers started, and to Bucky’s growing horror, it looked like Rogers was on the verge of some type of emotional eclipse. Anger, sadness, something, and Bucky wanted nothing to do with it. 

He stepped back, left hand flashing his knife in warning. “What are you doing here?” Bucky asked again, words clipped to show he was not kidding around this time. 

Rogers, heedless of the warning, followed Bucky step for step into the apartment. “Bucky, this is – this was our apartment.” He was reaching out again, hand so desperate to touch he was willing to let Bucky cut it to ribbons with his knife. 

“Yeah, okay, pal,” Bucky said, eyeing Rogers for any discernible weapon. Fucking idiot wasn’t carrying any as far as Bucky could see. “Well, it’s my place now and I don’t want you here, so get the fuck out.” 

It wasn’t his best threat, but it wasn’t his worst either. Usually he was the more silent and deadly type and Hydra had a fairly strict ‘you aren’t a person to us so don’t speak’ policy going on, so he was bit rusty on the whole exchange of dialogues thing that people did. 

“That’s not true,” Steve earnestly denied, head shaking back and forth like it was only loosely connected to his neck. “You wouldn’t be here, in our apartment, if you didn’t want me to find you.”

Bucky blinked blandly at him. “Hate to break it to you, bud, but I don’t remember ever living here and I don’t fucking remember you.”

Steve’s expression fractured into something that was so utterly pained, Bucky checked his hand to make sure he hadn’t stabbed Rogers without noticing, but no, the knife was still clutched firmly in his hand and as far as he could tell, Steve wasn’t physically injured. 

Right. So. This was getting awkward. It was never too late to pull out, even if he’d been willing to let Steve find him if only because Bucky had been secretly yearning to see him again. Still, that was over so –

Bucky flipped the knife to his right hand, then pulled his metal hand back. It whirled frantically as Bucky prepared for his fist to make contact with the side of Rogers’ face. It’d knock the guy out cold and Bucky could lug his stupidly muscled body out of the apartment. Afterwards, Bucky could gather up his shit and move onto a hopefully better suited hideout. 

Except when he let his fist fly, Steve caught it like it was nothing. He gripped it tight, tight enough that when Bucky went to yank it free, they both moved in tandem. Bucky glared, teeth bared in displeasure. He tensed his right hand on his knife, ready to slash at Steve’s wrist until he let go.

It didn’t come to that. “I won’t tell,” Steve rushed out, jerking Bucky towards him by his caught hand. “You can stay here. I won’t tell anyone, Bucky, I promise.”

It was fucking ridiculous, so Bucky scoffed out a laugh. “The hell you talking about? You really think I’m gonna believe you aren’t here to take me in?”

“I’m not,” Steve said adamantly. “I just – Jesus, Bucky, I didn’t even think you’d be here. I came because – because I miss you and I wanted to be somewhere we had been and –“

Bucky stopped listening, eyes going distant, as he saw it. As he saw the room around him blur into something almost familiar. Something not quite as dilapidated, with curtains on the windows, well worn rugs on the floor, a couch with a sagging middle. There was Steve, little Steve, with his thin shoulders and long face, grinning as he peeled potatoes next to Bucky. 

They were talking, at least, Bucky could see Steve’s mouth moving, lips curled up in a smile, but the words weren’t there. It was a half memory, the same silent movie clips he’d been experiencing since the Potomac. 

“Bucky?” A tentative hand touched his shoulder.

Bucky jerked back to reality, hand jabbing out on defensive instinct, knife sinking smoothly into Steve’s side. Steve gasped, long fingers still wrapped ever so gently around Bucky's shoulder. 

In shock, Bucky’s eyes dropped to Steve’s side, to the red blood flowing freely from the wound, darkening his grey t-shirt in a matter of seconds. Something like fear squeezed sharply on Bucky’s insides and he jolted into motion. 

He broke free of Steve’s grip and tore off his black sweatshirt, bundling it up in his hand and pressing it hard to Steve’s side. “Sit down,” he directed, pushing heavily on Steve’s shoulders until he obeyed. “Hold this here,” he continued, dipping his head to make eye contact with him since Steve didn’t exactly seem to be all in his head. 

There was a stuttering nod from Steve, but he made no move to take the sweatshirt. “Steve,” Bucky snapped and the effect was immediate, just as he had assumed it would be.

Steve’s hand crushed against the fabric of the sweatshirt, lungs gasping for air he had apparently been disinterested in taking since the sudden stabbing. Assured that Steve could manage on his own for a moment, Bucky stepped back, but Steve’s free hand shot out, wrapping tight around Bucky’s ankle. 

Had Steve not been bleeding out on the floor, Bucky would have rolled his eyes. As it was, he kicked off Steve’s grip lightly. “Just getting some bandages, geez, relax, pal,” he said, forcing levity into his tone. 

“Yeah,” Steve breathed out harshly, “right, sorry.”

And Bucky winced. The guy should not have been apologizing to him. Well, okay, he probably should have apologized for more or less breaking into Bucky’s completely not humble abode, but not about anything else. Bucky was the freak that had stabbed him when he hadn’t meant to.

In the corner of the room, Bucky had a black duffel bag that was filled with his change of clothes, extra weapons and ammo, and emergency kits. He dug through the latter, coming out with gauze and tape. 

Returning to Steve’s side, he bent down, pushing the sweatshirt away to see how badly the knife had got him. It wasn’t a pretty wound. Bucky winced at the sight, right thumb edging along the tear, eyes calculating the need for stitches. 

“I heal quick, remember?” Steve asked, watching Bucky. 

“Don’t actually,” Bucky said, “but I’ve read about it.” He jerked his head to the left, directing Steve’s attention to the wall of clippings. It was a bit like revealing an intimate secret, but as long as it kept Steve’s attention off him, Bucky wasn’t too put out about it. 

He didn’t like being under Steve’s gaze, it felt too much like being hunted and found wanting. His thumb pressed down against Steve’s sweaty skin, the wound oozed more blood rapidly; Bucky hissed through his teeth; Steve was definitely going to need stitches. “Give me a second.”

Bucky was back across the room, digging out a bottle of rubbing alcohol, dental floss, and a needle. It wasn’t glamorous, but it worked well enough for short periods of time. He figured Steve had a team of doctors waiting for him in every corner of the country. Once Bucky pushed him hobbling out the door, he’d be on his way to safe and sanitary care. 

When Bucky sank back down beside Steve, Steve eyed the contents of his med kit with something like amusement. “Really, Buck? Dental floss.”

Bucky shot him a caustic look. “You wanna bleed out, be my guest, but at least have the decency to do it in the hallway.”

Steve lifted his hands in deference. “Have at it.”

Bucky grunted and got to work, upending the rubbing alcohol on Steve’s side then wiping it away with a clean edge of the sweatshirt. He laced up the needle and floss, once they were both washed down with their own dosing of alcohol. “Ready?” he asked, glancing at Steve who nodded briskly. 

The stitches were neat and orderly, he doubted Steve would get better work from his doctors, but at least it would be real stitching instead of floss stitching. “Okay?” he asked, feeling he should check in with Steve since he hadn’t heard a peep outta the guy since he got started. 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine, Bucky,” Steve said, but he didn’t sound fine, he sounded winded. 

Bucky frowned, leaning back on his heels as he wrapped gauze over the wound and taped it up. “Really? One little stab wound and you’re taking deep breaths?”

Steve choked out a laugh. “No, it’s just –“ He shook his head. “You don’t wanna hear it.”

“Try me,” Bucky said, knowing that Steve was probably right.

“We’ve, uh, done this before, only usually in the reverse. You patching me up after some fight I got in and couldn’t get out of cleanly.” He was watching Bucky keenly again and Bucky assumed he was searching for signs of recognition. They didn’t come. 

“Right, well, you’re patched up now.” He stood up, eager to escape Steve’s critical gaze. 

“Thanks,” Steve said with a kind of horrifying amount of sincerity.

“I stabbed you,” Bucky felt it necessary to remind him. “Seemed the only decent thing to do.”

“You, uh, didn’t mean to stab me, then?” Steve asked, easing himself slowly upwards. 

Bucky shrugged. “I was thinking about it.”

Disappointment crested Steve’s features. “Oh.”

A horrible silence descended on them and Bucky reverted to thoughts of knocking Steve out. Before it could come to that, Steve nodded to himself. “I was serious before, I won’t tell them you’re here. I – I’m just glad you’re okay.”

Bucky remained silent for a beat but eventually the stupidity of that statement won out. “I tried to kill you, repeatedly, last time we met. Why would you be glad I’m okay? Do you have a death wish?”

There was weird pause before Steve answered, an alarming one, one where if Bucky was a different kind of guy, he’d probably be worried or something. But Bucky wasn’t a different kind of a guy. With Hydra he’d known more than one guy working with the outfit purely for the chance of getting blown away. Not that he could name a single one, just the impression they left behind.

Some people, Bucky had found, were desperate for an escape, but not desperate enough to be the one to do it. Some people needed a way out granted by someone else’s hand. Bucky didn’t judge. Everyone’s life sucked major ass to varying degrees, how they wanted to get out of that or live through it was their business, not Bucky’s.

Bucky’s life was a shit show of blank memory spaces and murder, but something in him kept going, kept running to the next fight, the next reprieve, the next whatever. Steve, though, Steve and his horrible silent pause were not, apparently, on that train with Bucky.

Steve pressed a tentative hand to his side, sucking in a quiet breath at the still fresh pain. “Not a death wish, Buck. Just a stupid one, I’m looking for my best friend.” He gave Bucky wide, deplorable, puppy eyes.

Bucky was not impressed. “Right, well, dunno what to tell you, guy, but I’m not him. I’m scrapes and pieces, but I’m not Bucky.” He shrugged, because it didn’t bother him as much as it probably should have. He was more than thrilled just to have a fucking name of his own, even if it was taken off the epitaph of Steve’s dead best friend. 

The puppy eyes grew more pronounced. “I could help you, Bucky – I want to.” 

And really, this guy, this guy just had to keep pushing until someone snapped. With an aggrieved sigh, Bucky threw his fist hard, metal knuckles connecting solidly with Steve’s temple. The guy with down with a hard thud, collapsing boneless on the dirty floor. Bucky spared a thought to hoping he hadn’t pulled any of the stitches, they were damned good stitches. Then he canvassed the apartment and got started on shoving the essentials into his duffel and the rest in a pile to be burned after he lugged Steve Rogers unconscious star spangled ass out to the curb.

XxXxX

Bucky wasn’t on the run, exactly, since there wasn’t anything in particular to be running from. The information he’d gathered before relocating to Brooklyn was that both SHIELD and Hydra were in flaming ruins. Nobody from Hydra was going to come looking to collect Bucky and nobody from SHIELD was going to be painting a target on his back.

It might not always be that way. Soon enough one or both operations might get back on their feet and their first target might very well be the Winter Soldier, the Asset, the Weapon, but until that time came, Bucky was relatively safe. Or as safe as person without an identity, easy access to money, or a place to live could be. 

Now that America's darling, Steve Rogers, had destroyed his most recent home base, Bucky was on the move again. He’d decided that since Steve was all starry-eyed over memories they had shared in Brooklyn, it was time to get out of New York entirely. Without a destination in mind, Bucky had let himself drift, hitching rides on the side of the highway until he ended up in Boston. 

From there he had looked for the shittiest part of town and the most piece of shit housing he could find. He settled for a corner house on a block of rundown burned out shells of buildings. Bucky followed the usual precautions once he’d found his squatter’s hideout. He coated the handle to the front door with bloody palm prints, oozed out a good amount of blood to decorate the landing, giving the impression that some poor sap had died a horrifying death there, then sealed himself in one of the second floor rooms. 

Bucky was quite sure that this time, Steve Rogers wouldn’t be bumbling up on him. He’d even gone out and done extra research to be sure Bucky and Steve had never lived in Boston. God forbid he trip onto an old memory like last time. In fact, since that encounter with Steve, Bucky hadn’t had a single wavering flashback. 

Not that he was worried, because he wasn’t. They would come, there was no reason for them not to. It meant nothing that he hadn’t had one since he saw Rogers. It didn’t mean a fucking thing. Or at least, that’s what he was telling himself as he balanced a knife on the tip of his metal finger and stared with unfocused eyes at the montage mural of Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes adorning the far wall of what had presumably once been someone’s living room. 

Bucky had a nest of blankets and a defunct mattress in the opposite corner of the room that he was calling a bed. It wasn’t pretty but it was a lot better than sleeping on the goddamn floor. Hydra hadn’t given a shit where he slept, when they let him sleep a normal non-cryo induced sleep, which meant that he spent the majority of his life on cement floors. 

Flipping the knife into his hand, Bucky flung it with precision at the mural. It landed between the eyes of a black and white photo of a grim faced Natasha Romanoff. Who the fuck was that woman and why was she cropping up in more and more photos with Steve?

There was the pressure of a memory at the back of his thoughts, but nothing came. Bucky could feel it, the need to remember, the shape and impression of a memory waiting to be recalled if only Bucky could find the key to unlock it. And yet, nothing.

Steve was in the press a lot in general, the whole grand revival of his role as Captain America was enough to get both sides going. The side that saw Captain America as their own personal hero and the other side that saw him as exactly what was wrong with this country to begin with. Bucky saw him as a means to an end, but he appreciated the rest of the world’s obsession since it allowed him surveillance without any actual effort on his part. 

Steve appeared in everything from respectable new sources to the trashiest rag magazines. Nothing was too good or too low to cover any iota of a story on Captain America. The headlines were always rampant with speculation. 

_Captain America and Iron Man – Secret Lovers! Captain America or Captain SHIELD? Steve Rogers: Proof of Life Beyond the Grave! Captain America Resurfaces as Double Agent for HYDRA! Captain America and Black Widow – Love at Last! Captain America, Black Widow, Hawkeye LOVE TRIANGLE!_

The final one in all caps had made Bucky laugh, a sensation he had almost entirely forgotten about. He’d spent ten seconds thinking he was choking to death before realizing the wheezing noise was a laugh and the strange curl of his lips was probably a grimace aiming for a smile. 

Really, the shit these people cared about. The whole world was going to fucking pieces around them and they were all worried about where Captain America was sticking it. Which, if anyone had been paying actual attention, Bucky was confident Steve wasn’t sticking it anywhere that wasn’t his own right hand. The guy didn’t have a lot of time for romance or sex. Hydra resurfacing, SHIELD crumbling, Bucky being all “Who the hell is Bucky?” and it seemed Steve had quite enough on his plate without time to spare for kissing and telling.

Not that Bucky wasn’t suspicious of Natasha, because he was. Hella suspicious. Dame was far too good looking to be that pissed off in every photo taken of her. Something was up with that and Bucky was concerned that he was at the center of it. 

He hadn’t expected Steve to lay off the search for him once he escaped New York, but it would have been easier if Steve wasn’t plastering his concern all over the tabloids. They were calling this one _Trouble in Lovers’ Paradise_ since Steve hadn’t been seen smiling once in a picture since the Potomac. Bucky couldn’t figure out why Natasha wasn’t putting a lid on that. They were broadcasting their current mission to any idiot with a pinkie’s worth experience in espionage. 

Still. Bucky turned his thoughts back to his own problems. He glared at the smiling image of his younger self, arm swung cheerfully around Steve’s broad shoulders. Now, if only that meant something beyond Bucky looking like an idiotic yuppy. Jesus. Who did that? Who went around smiling like that during a war? This asshole, apparently. 

Bucky sneered. Sometimes, in his darker moments he wondered if he might be better off not remembering his past. What if he was some kinda loser who had wanted to weep into his mama’s lap the first time he killed a guy? What if he had a gal at home he’d run out on when she got pregnant? What if he had deserted the Allies and joined up with Hydra? What if he was a fucking Nazi?

Then he’d think about that desperate look Steve had given him and that look – Shit, there was no way Captain Fucking America would be giving that look to somebody who had done any of those things. And then he’d think maybe that was worse. Maybe Captain America was remembering someone who had died seventy years ago and there wasn’t a chance in hell Bucky could ever be him again.

‘Cause the thing was, Bucky was okay with himself. In the privacy of his own thoughts, which was where he spent the majority of his time since nobody at Hydra ever wanted to hear a damn thing he had to say, Bucky was okay with who he was. Yes, he was somebody that killed people for a living, but that was the life, kill or be killed. Maybe it wasn’t the bravest thing, knowing that after a certain amount of pain, of agony, of torture, that he’d break that way.

He’d shattered into someone who understood his role. The Weapon, the Asset, the Winter Soldier. He could be any of those, he was good at being those. He didn’t remember the missions, the targets, the murders. All he ever remembered, no matter what, was the pain that led to him being able to be those things. 

Now though, there wasn’t pain. Not that type of pain. Just the pain of absence, of trying to get something back. Something more than his name. His glare flickered from his own smiling face to that of Steve Rogers. Fuck that guy for being the key to those memories.

XxXxX

Bucky had a plan. It was a shit plan, he was well aware of that. There were other plans he could have used. Plans that the Winter Soldier or the Asset would have approved of. The Weapon wouldn’t have approved of any of the plans since none of them contained outright destruction. But that was the cut, so whatever.

It was pouring out, Bucky felt that was apt. He hunched further into his jacket, sneakers soaking through with the torrent of rain pouring down on him. The road was strewn with debris, paper bags, wrappers. It wasn’t a pretty sight, but it matched the scraggled, hideous grass bursting roughly through the cracks in the pavement. Stalled out cars littered the sides of the road, hubcaps missing, tires deflated, windows smashed into splintered spiderwebs. It was an aesthetic, Bucky assumed, as he turned his head down against the rain and squeezed himself into the tiny space of the public phone booth. 

The two by two square reeked of piss and Bucky tried his damnedest not to touch anything. He was already rain soaked, he did not need to add piss soaked to that, especially when he didn’t have a real way to wash his clothes. Grimacing, Bucky reached out with his metal hand for the phone.

To his immense surprise and satisfaction he was met with a robotic voice instructing him to deposit twenty-five cents for the first five minutes of his call. Reaching into the pocket of his coat with his free hand, Bucky scrounged up four quarters and dumped them into the machine. They clinked as they went down before a dial tone met his ear.

Bucky punched in the number he’d memorized after knocking Steve out in New York. It rang several times and Bucky was beginning to get annoyed. If he had wasted his time walking in the rain and ruining his recently stolen shoes for voicemail he was going to shoot something. Probably a raccoon. Enough of them were creeping around his apartment. 

Maybe he’d go caveman and roast it on the ground floor. He’d eaten worse on a mission before. At least, he thought he had. There was some vague recollection of eating a stray cat. Jesus. Bucky grimaced. Some memories, he was certain, were not worth remembering at all. 

Just as he was thinking of hanging up and pulling his gun from his waistband for a round of impromptu raccoon hunting, someone on the other line picked up. “Hello?” a tentative voice asked.

Bucky focused on how cold, wet, hungry, and generally miserable he was. “Steve?” he asked, voice trembling with the unhappiness of his situation. 

Steve’s gasp of shock was entirely worth the performance, though Bucky made sure that his smile stayed locked inside of his own thoughts rather than betraying itself on his lips. “Buck? Jesus! Bucky? Where are you?”

Shaking his head at the stupidity of Steve’s concern was not something Bucky could deny. He had stabbed and then knocked the guy unconscious last time they met. The last thing on earth Steve should want to know was where Bucky was. “I’m, uh – I’m not in New York.”

He’d practiced what he was going to say beforehand. Not that he was likely to slip up anyway, but he still didn’t want Steve pounding down his door in the middle of the night because he’d been dumb enough to let some inconsequential detail slip. 

“Okay, okay, yeah,” Steve muttered quickly. “But you’re okay, right, Bucky? You’re safe?”

Bucky glanced around at his burned out, gunned down surroundings. A smirk quirked the side of his mouth and he worked not to let it show in his tone. “I’m okay.”

“That’s good,” Steve said, real relief in his voice. 

And actually, seriously, what the fuck was wrong with this guy? Bucky was beginning to question his past self for being friends with this sap in the first place. The guy was a walking liability even without the damn ‘shoot me please’ stealth gear he called an uniform. 

Silence traipsed between them as Bucky waited for Steve to make some kind of move. Eventually, with a quick inhale, Steve asked, “Do you – you need help, Buck?”

Fucking finally. Jesus. It was like pulling teeth with this guy to get him to do what Bucky wanted. “I just – I don’t remember anything,” Bucky said, one thumb jabbing harshly into his kidney, keeping pain close to the surface so that it worked its way into his words. 

“Yeah, of course,” Steve agreed eagerly. “That’s okay, I can help you remember. I want to.” 

“Could you . . .” Bucky trailed off, counted to three in his head, and picked back up, “Something about us, as kids?”

Steve’s acceptance was immediate. “We lived a block apart and old man Conners had a dog. Big dog, mean too. I was allergic to dogs, I was allergic to pretty much everything, actually.” He huffed a quiet laugh and Bucky quickly sorted through what the appropriate reaction would be. 

Bucky didn’t remember any of this, not his house, the block they lived on, old man Conners, or his stupid dog. So laughing along, that’d be a lie. But would Steve prefer that lie? In the end he just hummed out a non-committal noise. It was enough to prompt Steve to continue the story and Bucky gave himself a mental pat on the back. 

“So one year, the boys on the block, we decided to go trick-or-treating. It wasn’t big back then, like it is now, Halloween, I mean. Half the people told you to shove it and the other half handed off candy that was at least six months old. Not that we cared. Candy was candy. But when we got to old man Conners', he was waiting for us. Had seen us going to the other houses. And he was right at his stoop, dog on a leash growling up a storm.”

The story was rambling, Bucky could blearily imagine the situation, but it wasn’t stirring anything up for him, not even the impression of a memory. He glared at the water seeping steadily under the plastic door of the phone booth. This had been a waste of time. Rogers wasn’t going to be any help at all. 

“And Stebby, he was the oldest kid on our block, three years older than us, he was shoving me in front, saying I should go ask for the candy. I told him to back off, clearly Conners wasn’t going to be giving us anything but rabies. But Stebby keeps shoving me and he was a big kid, not just for being older. And you were getting mad, telling him to back off.”

Bucky felt his eyes go unfocused. Felt it coming up like quicksand, like drowning. 

There was stupid fucking Stebby Pickens. All of twelve years old, thick set, with flame red hair. And he was fucking shoving Steve, Steve who was the size of a Raggedy Andy doll, limbs like twigs. Steve who hadn’t even wanted to go out. Bucky could see that too. Bucky pleading, hand clamped on Steve’s wrist, dragging him out of the house in pair of Steve’s old man’s clothes with coal on their cheeks. They were dressed as hobos or some shit. 

And fucking Stebby was shoving Steve’s shoulder and Bucky knew, Bucky knew Steve was going to bruise, because Steve wasn’t going to back down and stupid fucking Stebby wasn’t going to stop shoving. So Bucky shoved him back, pressed his hand to Stebby’s shoulder and shoved as hard as he could. 

Stebby fell back a step, a mean glare narrowing his eyes. Bucky watched the kid’s mouth open and close, but there wasn’t sound, just another silent movie clip trying to pass itself off as a memory. He watched himself step closer, give Stebby another shove and then Stebby’s right hand was swinging for his face except stupid Steve was stepping in front of Bucky, taking the hit square to the jaw. 

It was a blur after that. Bucky jumping on Stebby and going straight for the throat, one hand pinning Stebby down as he aimed for the bozo’s nose. Then old man Conners clattering down the steps as all the other kids took off. And that damn dog. Breaking free of the leash and –

“That fucker bit you!” The exclamation came without warning. Bucky wasn’t even certain if he was trying to speak to the tiny Steve from his memory which was fading out like murky water, or to the Steve at the end of the line.

Either way, there wasn’t a response, only dead silence. Bucky clapped a hand to his forehead in frustration. Jesus, he was better than this. So much fucking better. Only stupid Steve Rogers seemed to mess him up every time. Made him act a fool. It was embarrassing. 

“Well . . .” Steve allowed, “I mean, the dog did. Not Stebby.”

Something close to a laugh tried to work its way out of Bucky’s throat but he held it at bay by sheer will. Except that left him vulnerable to a different type of idiocy and before he could stop it, he said, “Yeah, well, Stebby would have too, given the chance.”

That set Steve off laughing hard. Bucky dug his blunt fingernails into his hair and tugged hard. What the hell was he doing? He needed to bail on this now. This was way too fucking risky for what he wanted to achieve. He wasn’t down in the dumps enough for memories to let himself get caught in the crosshairs like this. Wherever this was going, this conversation with Steve, it wasn’t going somewhere that Bucky could control and that was dangerous. 

So with a quick breath he ended it. “Thanks, Steve. Thanks. I gotta go.”

He hung up before Steve could plead for him to stay on the line. Hung up before he could say anything else stupid. When he opened the door to the phone booth he got blasted in the face with a downpour of cold rain. Figured. He deserved it for that stupidity. He really did.

XxXxX

So Bucky fell back off the radar. Kept himself to seeking Steve out through the papers, tried sternly not to notice the uplift in Steve’s black and white features. In the way Steve’s shoulders weren’t quite as tight as they had been in the weeks before. How his mouth was pulled down in a perpetual frown, but not unhappy, rather like he was thinking hard on something.

Bucky groaned, tossing the latest paper across the room. _New Love for Captain America!_ it proclaimed with a picture of Steve eating Fro-Yo. This guy, Bucky thought darkly, this guy was going to get himself offed before Bucky even had time to finish retrieving all of his lost memories. 

Whoever else was keeping tabs on Steve was going to have a hayday with this. Obviously Captain America was getting closer to solving the problem that had been vexing him in the past months. If they knew that problem was Bucky, well then, that put Bucky at risk as well. 

He rolled over onto his stomach, glowering out across his dank living space. He liked it here. Enough cats to keep the rats at bay, the floorboards weren’t too warped so the floor was still level enough for a table. He’d scrounged one up from the neighboring buildings, even found a chair, one leg was broken off but that didn’t matter much to Bucky. 

It was starting to look right cozy in here, for Bucky at least. Closest thing he’d had to a home since spending his long days, weeks, months, and years in the cryo chamber. But leave it to Steve Rogers to blow that all to hell. Pretty soon, whatever asshole was after Steve would be crawling this neighborhood, looking for the jackass that Steve was so desperate to protect.

Bucky sat up sharply, frowning. There was something in that. Something not quite – He pressed his index and middle finger to the space between his eyebrows, rubbing hard as if he could make a memory appear through sheer force. There was something, something nagging on the other side of his mind, the side that was a dark empty cave where his memories should have been.

But what was it? Something to do with Steve. Something with how he was giving everything away. Fuck. Bucky growled when nothing came of the thoughts. Not even a flash of understanding, just the continued prickle of something being off, being repeated. 

Bucky heaved himself to his feet and went to his duffel, across the room. He dug through it, fingers hoping to brush over smooth metal or plastic. His go to foods: canned whatever or granola bars. He came across neither and punched a hole in the wall to vent the frustration. 

Not that it was hard to do. The walls were rotting away from disuse, encouraged on by the termites that had taken up their residence here. Still, it was cathartic, his metal fist tearing through the wood with such ease, leaving a visible reminder of his actions, of his presence. 

Bucky spared an idle thought to whether or not Bucky Barnes was the kind of guy who punched holes in walls. His gaze came back to Steve’s dopey face in the old photos cut out and pasted onto his wall and thought not. The Bucky he used to be probably didn’t go around sleeping in abandoned buildings or shoplifting food either. That was life though, the ups and downs were shit. The only thing that mattered was if you made it through them. 

Shoving on his leather jacket and pulling a hat over his head, Bucky shouldered open his apartment door and made an easy jump between the floors. No point risking his neck on the stairs he’d set to fall through if anyone else should try climbing them. 

Outside, the weather had cleared up enough that the past week’s threat of rain was no longer visible in the clouds. Bucky jogged the three blocks it took to get to the edge of civilization. Once there were a few people sharing the sidewalks with him, Bucky drew his shoulders close, chin tucked into his neck, eyes scanning for any threat. Not likely here, where most people were either booze hounds or too hungry to throw a good punch. 

But he was programmed – he was trained – Bucky liked to be aware of his surroundings. That was it, he liked knowing what was going on around him. That was fucking it. And it was fine and it was probably even normal to like that for a bunch of other people who were not him. 

He finally arrived at the local Circle K, the overhead bell chiming as he tugged open the door. Inside, the cashier was a shifty looking guy. Eyes skittering all over the place, one hand on the counter, the other behind it. It made Bucky suspicious. This was the kind of guy just itching to shoot himself a thief, imagined or not. 

Not that this posed a problem. Bucky was a world class assassin, he was not going to get shot for shoplifting a bottle of water, two granola bars, and a can of peaches. He was in and out in less than five minutes, paying for a packet of cigarettes at the counter, the rest of his grocery shopping stowed innocuously out of sight. 

When he was no longer in view of the Circle K, he pitched his cigarettes to the first guy he passed who caught them with a ‘Fuck you!’ which really was more thanks than Bucky was expecting. Bucky ripped his teeth into the first granola bar, spitting out the plastic, and taking a hard bite of the bar. 

By the time he reached home again, Bucky had eaten both bars, downed the water, and he was working his way through the rest of the peaches. The arm came in handy at times like these, his metal fingers easily ripping open the can and sufficing the needs of something trivial like a can opener. Bet Hydra didn’t think of that when they were being all ‘we can build a man with a metal arm.’ Well, fuck them. Opening cans was one of the most badass things his arm could do. Anybody could throw a punch, even without a fist of metal. Nobody else was ripping open cans, thank you very fucking much. 

And it occurred to Bucky, as he made his way down his shitty street, that he kind of wanted to brag to someone about this prowess. Someone who’d be like, “Cool, Bucky, I’m incredibly jealous of your metal arm and its can ripping abilities.” 

Of course, his first thought was Steve Rogers. That guy practically applauded when Bucky spoke actually English instead of growling out animal noises. Except, that was not exactly the high praise Bucky was aiming for here. And he could just imagine Steve turning into a blubbering mess about Bucky mentioning his arm. From the pictures, he knew that good ole Bucky B was not the fist of Hydra. Sucker. No can ripping for him. Jackass. 

Bucky got back to his house, leapt the several steps necessary to miss the deadly trick step, and seeped back into the shelter of his tattered home.

XxXxX

Bucky didn’t know what caused it. Didn’t know if it was a sound, a smell, or what, but one minute he was sleeping the same dreamless sleep he had for decades, the next, color burst behind his eyelids, blinding him even in sleep.

He squinted as the image slowly took shape, at first nothing more than a square outline of a room, then desks, then chairs, then a blackboard, and finally people. People with blurry faces, but what the fuck ever. It was his first dream in neigh on a century, Bucky didn’t care if he dreamt ducks instead of people, anything at all was a major accomplishment here. 

Bucky made a slow circle of the room, of the blurry faced people bent diligently over their desks, of their pencils scratching nonsense words onto lined paper. He made it back to the front before he realized why he was dreaming this. 

There was little Steve. Tiny Steve, no older than thirteen. His thin legs dangling off the chair, feet not touching the ground; this Steve Bucky could break in half with the pinkie of his metal hand. Bucky took the seat next to him and turned to look at his once upon a time friend. Where everyone else was writing, Steve was drawing, and it wasn’t even nonsense. Well, it kind of was. 

It was a cartoon. Bucky glanced up at the front of the class to the see the teacher, some broad with frizzy hair and a blur of a face. He could tell she was squawking up a furious storm at Steve, if her angry gesturing was anything to go by, even if the words weren’t coming out of her mouth. The dream was silent, just like his memories. 

Bucky wondered if that meant there was something truly broken in his head. Something that wasn’t going to be fixed, not even by the fancy serum Hydra gave him to keep him alive past his time, to keep him impossibly fast, hard to kill, and easy to heal. He pushed the thought away, lest it break the dream. 

He drew his attention back to Steve and his cartoon. Steve was looking up at him now, sorrowful brows pulled together in an expression that made him look truly penitent. Bucky didn’t look there, though, he looked at the corner of Steve’s mouth, at the barest quirk hidden there that said Steve wasn’t sorry at all. 

He wasn’t sorry for drawing a comic where their teacher was standing on an iceberg, shouting her lungs out while the class threw snowballs at her. If Bucky squinted, he could make out his own likeness in the drawing, his hair all combed back, his chest covered in the school uniform. Unbidden, a grin curved his lips. He jabbed a finger at himself and Steve’s own finger went swiftly to his lips, cautioning Bucky with silence. 

Bucky nodded to let Steve know he wasn’t planning on making a racket about the picture. Then he tilted his head at Steve before tapping the picture again. He wanted to know where Steve was. He couldn’t see him in any of the sloping figures wielding snowballs. 

Steve shrugged and it tugged on something in Bucky’s memory. This self-effacing shrug that said so clearly, without any words necessary, that Steve didn’t think he was worth being in the picture. That it was complete without him. 

Bucky glared, because, fuck no, the artist needed to be in his own rendering, especially one that had the power of making Bucky smile, even if only in a dream. He tapped the paper again more pointedly, and with a tired sigh, Steve lifted his pencil and began to sketch himself into the image.

As it took form, Bucky realized that Steve wasn’t drawing the Steve in front of him. No, the broad shoulders, the stars and stripes across his chest, that was all Captain America. Bucky rolled his eyes. Really? This is what people got all hopped up about? Dreams were stupid, they didn’t even make sense. 

With ease, he pulled himself from sleep, casting off the dream and its meaninglessness. If dreams weren’t going to help him remember anything then he’d prefer the blackness of unconsciousness. At least then, when he woke up, he would feel reset, instead of irritated by a creation of his subconscious.

XxXxX

The next week, Bucky hitched a ride into a small scale city where the taxpayers were still willing to pay for their city library. He walked through the silent rows of books, bindings marked by the Dewey Decimal System, until he found himself in the biography section.

Bucky decided, about five minutes into his perusal of the available biographies, that he, in fact, hated libraries. The quiet, it was spooky. It was truly quiet, but in a stifled way, in a way that wasn’t sincere, in a way he didn’t trust. He was waiting for Hydra to drop down from the ceiling tiles at any moment or stupid Steve Rogers to come bursting from between the rows with a ‘Gotcha, Buck!’ It was unnerving. 

Still, he located his desired tomes and pulled them free of the other books. Then he found the most visibly concealed window, opened it, and slipped back out into the city. Bucky didn’t exactly have a library card and he wasn’t entirely sure he would ever be inclined to venture back to the library just to return the books he wanted, so small scale theft it was. 

Bucky spent the ride back to his side of town in the passenger seat of a rather too trusting Hostess worker’s truck, thumbing through the biography of one Steve Rogers. Bucky was surprised by how little it revealed to him. Most of the interviews were from either Peggy Carter, the Barnes family, or the Howling Commandos. For as much as the guy had been a wide spread celebrity, apparently nobody knew shit about him. 

It left Bucky with a strange taste in his mouth. Steve Rogers’ history existed, for most people, in the context of his life running in parallel lines to Bucky Barnes. Reading the biographies, Bucky learned more about the story of Bucky Barnes than he did about Steve, which was, after all, what Bucky was trying to do. But still. Red, White, and Blue was lucky he had come out of his hibernation icicle with his memories intact, otherwise he would have had a hell of a lot harder time piecing his history together than Bucky was having. 

The thing was though, when Bucky got back to the relative safety of his shitty, condemned apartment and had read his own biography cover to cover, twice, it was the same pattern. Bucky Barnes only existed to people in his orbit around Steve. Even for his own fucking family, they framed him in reference to Steve.

Bucky’s formative years, all about bonding and making friendship bracelets and shit with a scrawny-ass Steve Rogers. His time at school, all about rabble rousing with Steve Rogers. The girls he dated, all about trying to find a nice gal for Steve and throwing over any of his own who didn’t like Steve. Moving out of the house, all about moving in with Steve and scrabbling to make ends meet for Steve’s endless illnesses. Joining the army, all about leaving behind Steve. Being rescued from Hydra –

It was the strangest thing. Bucky couldn’t breathe. He was staring at this horrible picture in the sidebar of the book of his younger self, dirty and hollowed eyed, leaning up hard against Steve. The caption said it was taken a few days after Steve’s triumphant rescue of his best friend. And Bucky couldn’t breathe. 

It was bizarre, feeling the panic from a distance. Knowing that his heart was racing, his palms sweating, his airways locked but not feeling it. Only seeing that picture. That goddamn awful picture. He knew this. He did. He’d read it in the Smithsonian. This was not new information. It shouldn’t matter. It didn’t matter. He was a decades old master assassin, he did not get tripped up by one stupid fucking picture.

With numb fingers, he forced himself to slam the book shut, to kick it across the room. Fuck. He was slipping. He was slipping hard. Maybe this was why Hydra never let him be a person. Maybe he was a wreck at it. Maybe he was better off as one of the other things. The Asset. The Weapon. The Winter Soldier. Maybe Bucky Barnes was who he was at his weakest.

XxXxX

It was a bad idea, he knew that. Still. He dialed the number, the wind whipping around the piss stained phone booth. “Hello?” Steve answered on the third ring.

“You should have left me there,” he said, voice coming out so vicious Bucky startled himself.

“Buck?” Steve asked hesitantly.

“You should have let me fucking die there. Can’t you see that?” He didn’t have a grip on himself at all. This was not well planned, this was a bungled mission from the moment he stepped outside his building. He should hang up the phone, hole up in his apartment until he could center himself again. 

“You were not going to leave me, Bucky. Not like that.” Steve’s words came fast and without thought, Bucky could tell by Steve’s surprised gasp that followed them.

As if Steve had any right to be surprised. It was not Steve’s right to decide how Bucky left him, he did not get that fucking right. “That was not your damn choice to make. They did this to me. If you had – if you had left me there, I could have fucking died like I was meant to!”

“You don’t know that,” Steve protested, apparently giving himself over to the argument. Maybe it was one they’d had before. Not as if Bucky would remember. 

“I don’t know what? That this is worse? Because I am pretty fucking sure I do know that, Rogers,” Bucky sneered down the line.

“Fuck you,” Steve threw back. “If it had been me, no fucking way would you have left me, Bucky, no fucking way. I don’t care what you tell yourself now, I don’t care who you are now, back then? You would have razed Hydra to the ground to get to me.”

“Then I would have been as fucking stupid as you were!” Bucky was rather astonished by his rage, in this strange compartmentalized way that wasn’t on the phone cussing out Captain America. 

He didn’t get worked up, that wouldn’t have ever helped him on a mission. He hated everyone and everything around him, but it was a quiet rage, one he didn’t let come to the surface. This though? This was out of control. This was him hanging off a flag pole shouting all his childish fears into the wind for the whole world to hear. And it was all fucking Steve Rogers fault. All of this. All of it was that asshole’s fault. 

“I am never going to apologize for pulling you off of that table, Bucky,” Steve said adamantly.

“And I am never going to be fucking Bucky Barnes,” Bucky shouted irately. “He died on that goddamn table. Whoever you got back? That was not your fucking best friend. It was a shell. And that shell fell off the fucking train and got dragged back where it belonged. That shell has always belonged to Hydra and it always will!” 

Before things could escalate into even more dire dramatics, Bucky slammed the phone down and screamed. He screamed until his throat felt raw, screamed until he fell to his knees, screamed until he punched a hole through the plexiglass of the phone booth. Then he stared at his bloody knuckles and wondered why he had been dumb enough to punch with his right hand instead of the metal one.

XxXxX

Bucky was a fucking wreck. He could see that quite clearly and he had no idea how to pull it all back together. The longer he was away from Hydra, the more his memories fell together and the more he fell apart. Had it been a gift? What Hydra had given him, that blank nothingness that held him together?

His hand was under the faucet in the wall unit of countertops and cabinets that claimed to be the kitchen; he was lucky nobody had bothered to turn off the water to this building. It came out sludgy and smelling like rust, but it washed the blood off his knuckles all the same. He stared as it swirled down the drain in a mess of red and brown.

Fucking hell. This was a shit show. Fucking Steve Rogers. Bucky hissed at the name and glared daggers at the wall marked by knife points and paper clippings. 

Bucky hadn’t looked for Hydra since the fall. Hadn’t thought about it. Had only rejoiced in his escape. Now though . . . Now it was time to start looking. Whatever this was, this life he was carving out, it wasn’t fucking worth it. Bucky Barnes wasn’t fucking worth it. 

A pounding thundered to life in his temples. Bucky fisted his hands against them, trying to grind out the headache. Colors popped before his eyes, the world around him slanting and swaying. White noise rushed in his ears. 

“Fuck,” Bucky ground out, his molars clamped together. “Fuck!”

He fell to his knees, his weight rattling the tired floorboards. Hands clamped over his ears, eyes pinched so tight it hurt, Bucky rocked forward until his forehead was melding with the dirty floor. The pain was everywhere, radiating through his entire being, blacking out everything around him until there was nothing, nothing at all.

XxXxX

A kick to the ribs brought him back to life. Bucky had been floating in the darkness. It had been nice, not cold like cryo. He had been floating and nothing had mattered. He didn’t have to be anyone or anything. He just was and the darkness was and that was all.

The kick, though, that was bullshit. With a groan, he forced his eyes open, sprawled spread eagle on his back on the floor of his shitty apartment, teeth still clamped fiercely together. The pounding, throbbing pain battering at his temples was duller now, though. His vision was grey and fuzzed out, but he made out a pair of sneakers and tracked them up to a pair of jeans that led to a t-shirt. 

“Fuck you,” Bucky slurred, eyes clamping back down.

A frustrated sigh was the only warning he had before he was being dragged across the floor and deposited none too lightly on his mattress. It sunk beneath his weight and left him feeling oddly suspended. 

“You’re an asshole.” The voice came from beside him and way too close. Bucky believed in personal space, not that Hydra ever allowed it, but if anyone had asked him, less than two feet apart was about a thousand percent too close. Right now, America’s bubble gum blue hero was plowing straight through the two foot mark and encroaching very heavily on less than six inches. 

Bucky wanted to lash out, physically force the stars and stripes dick away from him, but he had nothing left, just the pain in his head. So Bucky did the best he could, smashed his face into the musty mattress and groused, “Trespasser.” It was not a moment of glory. 

There was another prod to his ribs and Bucky’s groan wasn’t even slightly dramatic. Any movement sent his brain spiraling in a kaleidoscope of pain that even Hydra had only touched upon on occasion. 

“I traced your calls.” Warm breath brushed against Bucky’s cheek and really this was just fucking unnecessary. There was no fucking reason for Steve Rogers to be that close to his person. Bucky might have been a worthless husk of a person at the moment, but he was still entitled to some goddamn personal space, even two inches of it. 

“Go away,” he growled, to express this. Although, he couldn’t be certain that Steve understood anything he said since even to Bucky’s ears, his words seemed like a gargled mess. 

“Can you open your eyes?” A finger prodded at his cheek and the touch of a thumb gently pulled against his eyelid.

“Open this,” was Bucky’s rejoinder and he was fairly certain he flopped his hand around enough to flip Steve off. Then again, he passed out before confirmation, so, it was all a little up in the air. 

When Bucky came to again, he was able to open his eyes to slits. It helped, apparently, that the sun had gone down in the interim. The raging pain in his head was down to more manageable Hydra levels and Bucky found he was able to turn and scan his apartment. He was looking for Boy Wonder, half thinking the whole thing where Steve Roger’s was breaking into Bucky’s supposedly super secret apartment for a second time had been some sort of agony induced delusion. 

Except, there was Steve Rogers, kicked back in Bucky’s three legged chair, reading one of the Steve Rogers biographies Bucky had stolen from the library. Bucky wished desperately that he was still hallucinating. Apparently, Steve could read that clear across whatever Bucky’s facial muscles were doing. “Traced the phone calls, remember?”

Bucky grimaced. It had been a risk he knew he was taking; he had just hoped the good old Captain was as out of it with technology as all the newspapers liked to claim. Obviously fucking not, though. Bucky flopped a hand across the mattress and pointed toward the biography. “Your egomania is showing.”

The corner of Steve’s mouth ticked up. “Your interior designer is shit.” He glanced pointedly around at the wallpaper peeling off in stripes, the questionable black mold running along the countertops, the knots in the floorboards, and Bucky’s own disheveled heap of a bed. 

This time, Bucky was fully successful in flipping his intruder the bird. “Can you get the fuck out now, I’m not dead.”

Steve snapped the biography shut and dropped it down on the table. Then he tilted the chair in Bucky’s direction and frowned. Bucky was rather impressed. He had seen that frown in the magazines, they coined it his ‘America is disappointed in you,’ frown. “Let me help you, Buck.”

“I don’t need help.” 

Steve’s frown deepened. “You’re living in a shithole, Buck. I found you passed out in a puddle of your own drool when I got here. You really think you’ve got this all under control?”

Something like panic ticked through Bucky’s system. Control? Jesus, who did this asshat think he was kidding? The last time Bucky had anything under control was in the such non-existent past that it might as well have been a parallel universe. In his chest, his heart decided now was the time to take off like a freight train. Of all the fucking bullshit, what Bucky really sincerely did not need at this exact moment was to have a panic attack in front of Steve Rogers. Not when he was trying to go all protective on Bucky’s ass.

Still, as Bucky was well and truly aware, there was very little Bucky had control over and the panic attack was simply out of reach. It shot through him head to toe, making him shrink in on himself. His heart rate making him nauseous, breath skittering through him. Everything was closing in around him, the very air pressing in on him to suffocate. He couldn’t say anything, words blocked out by the panic. All he could focus on was how awful he felt, how desperate and helpless, how –

“Buck?” His name was spoken in soft worried tones and followed very quickly by a large hand pressing against his forehead, pushing back his sweaty hair. 

Bucky jerked away from the touch, the panic making it feel far more painful than a simple touch could be. Bucky grit his teeth, curling smaller and wishing desperately this would just stop. He was a master fucking assassin. He did not get panic attacks and if his shitty body decided he was going to have one, it should have had the fucking decency to not do it in front of fucking Captain America. 

“Bucky,” Steve said more sternly this time, one hand pressing firm against Bucky’s sternum, his heart seeming to ping against the hold and that was – that was oddly soothing.

Air slipped more easily into his lungs, Bucky’s muscles eased slowly out of their cramped positions as he counted the beats of his heart against Steve’s strong palm. The pounding in his head receded a few minutes later and Bucky was finally able to pry his eyes open. 

Bucky was ready for dramatics. He was ready to sit up, throw a swing, and spit in Steve’s face, just to prove he wasn’t as fucking weak as the panic attack had made him seem. Instead, when he sat up, he swayed directly into Steve’s chest and the jerk had the nerve to hold onto him, careful arms wrapped around his back. 

“Jerk,” Bucky breathed out, just to make it obvious where they stood since nothing else he was trying to do was working.

Steve huffed. “You keep trying to convince me you’re not Bucky Barnes, but I don’t know anyone else who called me names with the kind of vigilance he did.”

Bucky’s body was going through shock, or something, he assumed. That was the only explanation for why he was allowing Steve to hold onto him. Bucky wasn’t normally awake for the parts of his time with Hydra where his body shut down in some way or another. If he was hit on a mission, he worked through it until he could get back to Hydra. Then they’d sedate him so he wouldn’t behead them all, and the problem was taken care of. He could remember that, sort of, the way you remembered a fever dream. 

The fact that Steve Rogers was now straight up slaughtering Bucky’s personal bubble was all kinds of offensive, except Bucky’s body refused to do anything to remedy that. The worst part, though, was Bucky wasn’t even sure how much he minded. It wasn’t as if Steve fucking Rogers was going to hurt Bucky. That had already been well and truly proven, excepting that kick to the ribs earlier. 

“You kicked me,” Bucky slurred out, the words thick from the panic.

“Wanted to be sure you weren’t playing possum to stab me,” Steve explained casually, like getting stabbed by people was a regular occurrence for him. It was for Bucky, so who was he to judge? 

Steve’s palm was still pressed to Bucky’s sternum, his other hand placed lightly over Bucky’s waist, not necessarily restricting him, but definitely holding him in place to a certain degree. Again, Bucky knew he should be fighting violently against that; again, he continued to use Steve as an overly muscular pillow. 

Of course, Bucky was also more worried about the fact that he was apparently bleeding from the eyes and nose than he was about who or what was acting as his backrest. Bucky was willing to assume that the migraine before had started to liquefy his brain and it was only now starting to ooze out. He figured he should be more horrified by that than he was, except years with Hydra, even only half remembered, assured him that was not the worst thing that could happen to someone.

He took a haphazard swipe at the wetness because he would at least rather die without blood on his face, but his hand came away clear. Which meant - holy fucking shit. “I’m crying,” he said dumbly, turning until his cheek touched the soft fabric of Steve’s zip-up sweatshirt. He rubbed the tears off on Steve because Bucky did not deserve to die crying either. 

Steve lifted his hand off Bucky’s waist and bent their bodies forward to reach for the blanket. Bucky had managed to procure the blanket from a pleasant homeless gentleman in exchange for a bottle of water and smokes. It was currently kicked to a disheveled heap at the edge of the mattress, but Steve got a hold of it and offered it to Bucky. “I won’t tell anyone,” Steve swore with undue seriousness. 

“Nobody’d fucking believe you anyway,” Bucky threatened, even as he smeared snot into Steve’s clothes. “My brain’s melting,” he felt it incumbent to point out. There was no other explanation. 

“You’re brain is not melting,” Steve said flatly, dropping down the blanket, but not before giving Bucky a shove to the back of the head. “You had a panic attack, Buck, tears happen, deal with it.” 

Bucky sniffed indignantly. Master assassins did not fucking cry. Grown men in blue tights probably cried waterfalls all over everyone at least once a week. “I’m not fucking crying.”

“You are,” Steve rebuffed. Then he paused for a moment, hesitating even as he asked, “You remember the last time you cried?”

Bucky chose not to count any pain induced tears from Hydra. He was fairly certain those had existed, even if he couldn’t recall them. “Fuck if I know. Haven’t cried since – since – “ the shape of a memory forced itself into the patchwork quilt Bucky was building of his past life. The first real memory since his phone call with Steve about Halloween. 

Bucky was standing next to Steve, the hard benches of St. Michael’s Church digging into the backs of his knees. Steve was so quiet next to him, so quiet and looking so young in his ill fitting suit. Jesus. Bucky had offered to help him get a new one but Steve had begged off just like he always did whenever offered something he considered charity. 

The priest was yammering on and on, a good long sermon about Sarah Rogers and even though the words didn’t pass the priest’s mouth, Bucky remembered them all the same. Sarah Rogers and her dedication to the community, her caring compassionate nature in her position as a nurse, her devotion and love to her only son. 

And Steve was just standing there silently, not even crying, not even blinking, just taking it all in like this was his lot in life, to stand by while the people he loved died and left him on his own. 

So when Bucky felt a tear slipping down his cheek, he thought it was probably okay. It was okay if he cried, because he wasn’t be crying for himself, he was crying for his best friend who took on the whole world, all the time, and never thought for one second there’d be someone waiting at his side to help him through it all. 

Bucky had reached down, clamping Steve’s hand in his for a brief squeeze. Steve’s big eyes cut a sharp glance at Bucky who hastily tried to swipe away his tears. Steve saw them though, his mouth pulling lower before he squeezed Bucky’s hand, returning his attention to Father Stan and the dark wood casket Sarah Rogers was lying in. 

The edges of the memory blurred, his ratty apartment swimming back into view. “Buck?” Steve asked. His voice was just a breath against Bucky’s ear. It should have startled him. Should have prompted a knifing like it had at his old apartment in Brooklyn. It didn’t.

Bucky only shivered. “Haven’t cried since your ma died,” he said, finishing the dangling thought. 

There was a heavy pause before Steve bent his neck to lay his cheek on the top of Bucky’s head. It was an overly intimate gesture, Bucky felt a tingle of discomfort run up his spine. “She would have been mad that you were crying for her.”

“I wasn’t,” Bucky protested. “Was crying for you.” And the confession felt just as intimate as Steve’s touch.

“Geez, Buck,” Steve breathed. 

They fell into silence. Bucky was simply run dry. The tears had stopped and in their place, the throb in his head had returned. So he decided to make use of the safety of Steve’s body, of the one person on this whole damn planet who didn’t seem to want anything more from Bucky than friendship, as utterly stupid as that was. He slouched down on the mattress, made a grab for the blanket, and passed the fuck out, cradled against Steve’s chest.

XxXxX

“Bucky?” Steve asked, his voice drifting down to Bucky as if from a great distance.

Bucky groaned negatively. Whatever it was that Blue Eyes Apple Pie wanted, he was not going to get it right this damn second. Bucky was comfortable, and that was a concept so foreign he wasn’t even sure where to begin. But he was comfortable and Steve wasn’t taking that from him. 

“Buck, come on,” Steve repeated, sounding a little put out. “Wake up.”

“No,” Bucky grunted, he jabbed his shoulder hard into Steve’s stomach to try and force him into submission. Bucky had never realized that a wall of muscles could be so comfortable. But Steve’s body heat was keeping Bucky warm, and the even rise and fall of his breathing was remarkably soothing. 

“Wake up.” Steve shoved Bucky off the mattress and he landed with a hard thud on the floor. 

There as a brief moment during which Bucky sincerely contemplated stabbing Steve for this. It would have, of course, taken them quite a few steps back in the evolution of their relationship since the Potomac, but Bucky still thought it was a fitting reaction for Steve’s behavior. Before Bucky could get too far along his train of thought, Steve interrupted it. 

“Come eat the soup I brought you.”

“Soup?” Bucky glowered blearily up at Steve still sprawled comfortably on the bed. Asshole. 

“Yeah, in a thermos.” Steve stood up, stretching out his arms and crossing to an innocuous black backpack that had gone completely unnoticed by Bucky until this exact moment. Jesus. Bucky was seriously losing his game. 

From the backpack, America’s Apple Pie Sweetheart actually pulled out a goddamn thermos. He set it on the table and gestured for Bucky to come over. Bucky looked pointedly from the one chair, with its three legs, to the utter lack of another chair. At least if Bucky’s observational skills were going down the drain, they were still light years ahead of this idiot. 

“Okay, the bed then,” Steve said with a shrug. 

Half against it, but fairly interested in eating soup, on the grounds that it didn’t poison him, Bucky dragged himself up the bed, perching on the edge of the mattress. Steve sat down beside him, twisting off the top of the mug into two cups. He depressed the middle and poured a cup of chicken noodle soup that he handed off to Bucky.

Bucky peered at the contents suspiciously. Bits of carrot were floating around with hunks of celery. The noodles were thick and the chunks of meat overly generous. “Did the plane crash in the Arctic just entirely scramble your brains or what?” Bucky asked flatly. 

Steve appeared momentarily taken aback, as if he had forgotten that Bucky might be scrapping up a few memories, but he was still barrenly lacking tact. “Well . . . it froze me,” he finally allowed. 

“You made homemade chicken noodle soup for a mass murderer who had definite designs to murder your ass. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Steve lifted his own cup to his lips and took a slurping sip, wincing when it burned his tongue. “You always used to cook me soup when I was sick.”

“Jesus H. Christ, Rogers, I am not Bucky Barnes. I might where his mug, but I told you, that guy, your best bud? He’s dead. Been dead for decades.” From the corner of his eye, Bucky watched the tension between Steve’s shoulders mount, then dissipate completely. 

“You remember how we became friends?” Steve asked. He titled a glance in Bucky’s direction as he blew across his soup. 

“On a sunny Sunday afternoon, in Central Park, at age five –“ Bucky started to recite with a sneer. The heat from the soup tingled in the fingers of his right hand, it was enticing, hot food was an exciting luxury, but he hadn’t taken a sip yet. Better to see if Steve keeled over dead in the next five minutes. 

Steve rolled his eyes, and though he was smiling, Bucky could tell from the look in Steve’s blue eyes that he wasn’t happy. “Yeah, I read that too.” He gestured with his cup of soup towards the discarded biography on the table. “That’s not how it happened.” Steve blew cautiously across his soup again then took the plunge, slurping up a mouthful and wiping his lips with the back of his hand. 

Bucky waited to see if Steve would tell him the real story of how they became friends, but the minutes passed and it didn’t happen. In fact, enough time passed that Bucky felt it was safe enough to drink his soup. Steve hadn’t dropped dead and it smelled like real food, not the cardboard he lived off of. 

“You remember when we moved in together?” Steve eventually prompted, after watching to see if Bucky would spit out the soup. He didn’t, it was impressively good soup. Well, at least to Bucky’s undiscerning tastes. 

“Should I quote page sixty-four or would that just insult you?” Bucky asked. He slurped up a noodle, looking curiously in Steve’s direction. He had been expecting Steve to be broken up about Bucky’s blatant lack of memory not . . . not this. Not as if Steve was merely hearing what he expected to hear. 

“Remember when you almost proposed to Mary-Katherine Walsh? Or the winter I got laid up in the hospital with pneumonia? Or the time we found a mouse in the apartment? Or the day you shipped out?” Steve was looking sideways at him, expression mild. 

It was the lack of intent in Steve’s look that kept Bucky from getting pissed off. This wasn’t a test, it was – well, he wasn’t sure exactly, but he was fairly certain if he failed, unlike with Hydra, he wouldn’t be getting the shit fried out of his brains. “I’ve got a running tally of about ten memories, Steve, so no, I don’t remember any of that.” 

Steve bobbed his head before tipping back his soup and finishing off the cup. He reached forward between his legs, pouring another cup full then offered it in Bucky’s direction. Bucky readily accepted it. Two cups of soup weren’t going to equal the calories in one of the protein bars he downed daily, but they were a hell of a lot more enjoyable to eat. 

“You’re going to be Bucky whether you are trying to or not, whether you ever remember all the pieces or not. I would know, I know everything about Bucky Barnes and I haven’t seen a single thing about you that isn’t one hundred percent him.”

Bucky’s expression went completely and utterly flat. Unlike most other facial expressions, this was one Bucky knew for certain he had full command of. Then he shoved his cup into Steve’s hand and pushed off the mattress. Bucky crossed the room to his duffel bag and dug through it until he found what he wanted.

When he turned around, Steve was watching him with interest, sipping casually from his cup, eyebrows raised. Bucky tossed the canned pears from hand to hand, stopping a foot in front of Steve. Holding the can in his right hand, Bucky looked pointedly at Steve before jamming his metal thumb through the top of the can and ripping the top off with a screech of metal. He flung the can top to the floor. 

Steve took another drink of soup before he smirked. “Yeah, you’ve always been a prima donna, Buck.” 

Bucky considered chucking the can of pears at Steve. He really did. But the pears were good and it would be a waste of food. He opted for flipping Steve off instead. “Yeah, and I’m sure I’ve stabbed you and knocked you out before too. Just part of my Brooklyn Charm, right?”

Steve shrugged. “You gonna eat this or not?” He waggled the soup and Bucky snatched it from him before he could spill it on the floor. 

“Don’t pretend I’m someone I’m not, Uncle Sam,” Bucky cautioned harshly, dropping back down on the mattress. “’I want _you_ ’ is not going to work here.” He leaned against the wall, letting his head rest on the peeling wallpaper. The headache that had never fully abated was inching its way back towards pounding. “I might look like your dead best friend, but your best friend remains dead. Hydra killed him and shoved me in the shell.”

“Then who the hell are you?” Steve asked and if he was aiming for causal he missed by a mile. He sounded desperate and angry instead; Bucky was glad. He was finally getting through to the prick, about fucking time. 

“I don’t know yet,” Bucky allowed, “I just know who I’m not. I’m not your friend, I’m not your ally, I’m not who you remember, and I’m not Hydra’s guard dog either. Just got the skill set of one and the intention of being a person, whoever the hell that ends up being.” 

He watched Steve tense up, the muscles across his shoulders going tight, his fingers clenching around the cup of soup, his mouth compressing into a small line. And then he watched Steve relax, blow out a deep breath. 

“I never intended to get in fights, honest,” Steve began in earnest, eyes set on the lines of the floor. “Just, I couldn’t back down from them once they started. If I started running, they would never have let me stop. So I fought till I was a bloody mess and even after; I was always willing to go down swinging. Except you ran interference better than anyone, even if that meant taking me out on your own.”

Bucky stared at him, utterly incredulous. ‘Inseparable on the playground and battlefield’ did not at all equate to your best friend punching your lights out so you didn’t get smacked around by the neighborhood assholes again. Possibly, Bucky wasn’t the only one sorting through a deck that was only half full.

“It wasn’t anything cruel,” Steve explained with the kind of honesty that was indicative of blind faith. “When I was in too deep and nothing was going to take me out except a trip to the hospital, you’d do it for me, a hard knee to the ribs and I’d go down and the other guys would go scattering in the face of killing a guy like me. Then you’d drag me home and patch me up.” Steve shrugged, his shoulders lifting and falling like this confession was nothing. “So whoever you are now, Buck, you’re still that guy to me.”

And holy shit, Bucky was blown away by this idiot. How this idiot had made it through this far in his life was fairly inconceivable to Bucky. That kind of attitude, that kind of idiotic trust in another person, spelled nothing but certain death. Hydra was a well oiled machine that ran on blind loyalty; Bucky had watched asshole after asshole be murdered by Hydra and they went down smiling because hail fucking Hydra.

And here was Steve Fucking Rogers pledging the same kind of insane loyalty to Bucky, who was freely willing to admit he was not as put together as someone in possession of his vast murderous knowledge should be. 

It was as impressive as it was gigantically stupid. No wonder Hydra had been making an ass clown out of the SHIELD operation for decades. They had fools like Captain America as their ideal leaders. Jesus. 

Steve stood up, clapping one big hand on Bucky’s shoulder, but not making eye contact. He nodded to himself, then gestured toward the thermos of soup. “You can keep it. I made it for you.”

Bucky watched in silence as Steve left his own cup on the table, then ducked out the door without Bucky even having to prompt him to leave. He’d imagined things going differently, or at least, he imagined them following the same vein as the first time. With Steve refusing to go. Bucky hadn’t imagined this, not this quiet acquiescence. It left Bucky floundering. Lost because he had been ready to fight it out with Steve that he wasn’t that guy anymore, not the one from the biographies and Steve’s memories. Instead he got this. Whatever the hell this was, and frankly, it just added to his headache. 

Bucky tilted the cup and drained its contents before putting it on the floor next to the thermos. He listened as Steve’s footsteps faded down the stairwell, as Steve had the forethought to jump the janky step, as the door of the complex squealed shut. Alone once again, Bucky ate his pears.

XxXxX

The apartment, with all its mattress, blanket, table, and three legged chair glory, had to go. Steve had desecrated its doorstep and now it was time to move on to more remote locations. Bucky wasn’t all that broken up about it. He was fairly certain a raccoon had recently died in the next apartment over and the smell was beginning to affect Bucky’s mood.

Admittedly, the ceaseless migraine was also playing a role in his poor outlook on life. Since Steve’s visit five days back, and Bucky’s unfashionable melt down prior to that, migraines had been keeping Bucky constant company. He wasn’t exactly interested in finding out what it meant. There was no possibility of it being anything other than a symptom of his body degenerating. Everything had an expiration date, even freeze dried super soldiers from World War Two. 

And while Bucky wasn’t interested in the migraines, he was interested in Hydra. Steve had given Bucky his own apple pie, stars in the sky version of who Bucky was. It seemed only right to find out what exactly Hydra thought he was. What, not who, because Bucky was under no illusion that they had ever realized he was a person underneath all that metal and those perfectly aimed kill shots. 

The problem was, Hydra was proving hard to find. Bucky had holed up in one of their old lairs, up in Maine. It’d been a long ass journey, hitching rides there. People were apparently far less trusting than they had been in the 30s about guys with their thumbs out on the sides of highways. Probably didn’t help that Bucky was looking more homeless and destitute than could ever be considered shabby-chic. 

At his new abode, there were bloodstains on the cement floor of the debris strewn room Bucky was holed up in and this time, Bucky hadn’t even had to make them himself. Just some other sorry asshole who had had the misfortune of running amok of Hydra. The place was nothing more or less than an abandoned power plant, tucked away in a forgotten corner of an equally forgotten town. 

It was an obvious downgrade in living arrangements, but Hydra in general was a massive downgrade in everything pertaining to life, so Bucky felt he was back at the status quo. Bucky slept on the cold concrete, hand fisted around his preferred knife, and listened as rats and cockroaches scuttled across the barren room. He could have stolen a mattress, had even seen one at the dump as he passed his way through town in the trailer of some guy’s rusted out Chevy Pick-Up.

He just hadn’t. The Winter Soldier would not have needed a mattress, nor the Asset, nor the Weapon. If Hydra came for him, and he was working on the assumption that whatever was left of Hydra was still swinging by these old shitholes every once in a while, they wouldn’t be coming for Bucky Barnes, they would be coming for their property. 

Days were trickling into weeks though and Bucky was going out of his damned mind. The migraines never abated, the boredom ratcheted up until he was throwing his knives into a target he’d carved into the wall. If that target happened to carry the shape of Alexander Pierce, well then, that fucking asshole deserved a hell of a lot worse. 

Except, the worst part wasn’t the boredom, hunger, or barely tolerable headaches. The worst part was that Bucky could feel himself continuing to slip. He was scattered. There were parts of him, undeniable parts, that missed Steve. Missed him. Apple Pie Blue Eyes and Tights and Bucky missed him. Wanted to talk to him. Hear his voice. Touch him.

It was disgusting. Bucky had thought he was prepared for the pieces that came along with treating himself like a person instead of someone else’s property. He had been prepared to finally make choices of his own, to tell people exactly what he thought and nothing less, to do shit that he wanted to do simply because he wanted to. He had not been prepared to care about anyone else. Not even in whatever remote and probably twisted way he cared about Steve.

Except he did, and no one from Hydra was coming. No one was coming to tell Bucky he wasn’t a person. To beat him back down until even he doubted himself. No, he was just going to lose his goddamn mind here. There was nothing but this empty fucking building and the blood stains on the floor. 

Bucky laid down on the cement, huffing out a sigh, arms crossed comfortably over his chest. He wasn’t thinking about anything in particular. He was letting himself float along with the ebb and flow of his migraine, his thoughts pinging from one thing to another. He wanted to arm wrestle Steve. He was absolutely certain his metal arm would win against Steve’s super serum and he really wanted the satisfaction of being proven correct. 

Bucky smirked. Steve was an idiot, he would definitely agree to the feat of strength. He’d probably even go in planning to let Bucky win, just so he wouldn’t feel bad about his metal arm, and then he’d be shocked. He’d be so surprised to find that Bucky’s arm was a hell of a lot stronger than Steve’s. And Bucky would beat him, take him down, knock him out – 

Bucky frowned, because no, that didn’t exactly compute. He wasn’t going to knock Steve out. He only did that when Steve was being a shit head. When Steve got into another stupid fight he couldn’t possibly win and – and that wasn’t right either. Except it was. The memory pushed itself to the surface, utterly blocking out Bucky’s headache for the first time in weeks. 

It had been hot out. So fucking hot. It was the fourth of July and Bucky was waiting on Steve’s stoop, leaning up against the door and eating the last popsicle Mrs. Rogers had in her ice box. Bucky knew where the spare key was and if Steve couldn’t be on time to hang out with his best friend on his own birthday, then he deserved having Bucky eat the last damn popsicle. 

Except the sun was rising steadily to the burning height of afternoon and Steve still wasn’t anywhere in sight. Bucky was worried. If Mrs. Rogers came home and found Bucky sucking on the last popsicle, she’d ream him out just as bad as his own ma would. Better to find Steve and leave the missing popsicle a mystery to hopefully never be solved. 

He pushed off the stoop, tossing the popsicle stick into the garbage as he passed down the street and tried to think of where Steve would be loitering on his own damn birthday. The comic shop maybe? Or the art supply store? Maybe his ma had given him some money for his birthday and it was just burning a hole through Steve’s pocket, waiting to be spent. 

So Bucky loped off down the block coming up fast on Clark’s Art Supplies. Bucky peered through the window display filled with everything an aspiring artist could desire, but didn’t see Steve. He ventured further down the block, stopping at Ranger’s Comics Plus. He pulled open the door, the bell above chiming his entrance. He took a quick look around but none of the heads bent over records or comics were Steve’s.

Frowning, he left, wandering aimlessly down the street and cursing Steve for wasting his time. Bucky had bowed out of a date with Macy Hill for this and Jesus was Macy a gal. Long blonde hair tumbling down her shoulders in waves. Pink lips like fucking strawberries. Could have been Bucky’s for the afternoon, instead he’d gently let her down, said it was his best pal’s birthday and he couldn’t leave him high and dry, not even for a dame as beautiful as Macy Hill. 

The crash of a garbage can in the next alley over jumped started Bucky’s heart. 

Sound. Fucking sound! It was the first memory that ever had sound and Bucky was astonished because it didn’t seem to be going anywhere all that interesting.

He was running before he even processed why and glad of it when he found fucking Dozer McDuggin kicking the ever living shit out of Steve. Bucky barreled in without a second thought. “Fuck you, Duggin,” Bucky cursed as he rammed the older boy hard in the side. 

Duggin tripped sideways even as he lashed his fist out into Bucky’s ribs. “This don’t concern you, Barnes. Fuck off.”

“It obviously does, that’s my best friend you’re trying to turn into chopped liver.” Bucky jumped out of Duggin’s reach as he tried to grab at Bucky’s shirt and reel him in for a good punch to the jaw. Duggin was a real bastard. A year above them, big as a horse, and a creep. Looking up the girls' skirts with his own mother’s compact, starting shit with guys not even half his size, and a fucking Yankees fan. 

“Pick better friends then,” Duggin advised, breathing hard. It looked like Steve had gotten a few good hits of his own before he’d been trampled to the ground. There was a cut above Duggin’s left eye, bleeding steadily, a bruise already flaring to life on his right cheek, and a decent tear in his shirt. 

“Yeah, a great lug like you?” Bucky scoffed, putting himself between Duggin and Steve’s crumpled form on the alley ground. Bucky was praying something fierce that just this once Steve would stay down. Just this once that punk wouldn’t scrap himself back to his feet and ask for one more punch. 

If the prayers went anywhere, they fell on deaf ears. Steve dragged himself upright, swaying dangerously from a hit to the head or the fall, Bucky wasn’t sure. “I got this, Buck,” Steve assured him in a haggard voice that guaranteed Bucky the if Steve had even one thing, it absolutely was not this. 

“See, that piece of shit can take his own hits, Barnes, so back the fuck off.” Duggin’s eyes wrapped around Bucky, looking for the surest route to Steve. 

“It’s his fucking birthday,” Bucky said in a fit of exasperation, not sure if he was talking to anyone in the alley or if he was just trying to make himself believe it. 

“Won’t fucking live to see the next one,” Duggin promised, tensing himself to make a move for Steve.

“For fuck’s sake,” Bucky groaned, whirling around and slugging Steve right in the side of the head. Steve collapsed like a pile of sticks and Duggin’s arms fell lifelessly to his sides.

“What the fuck, Barnes?” he demanded, staring warily at his classmate. 

“We fucking done here?” Bucky asked, turning around so he was again between Duggin and Steve. 

“Guy’s your fucking best friend, you fucking freak.” Duggin was backing away steadily, staring at Bucky like he’d grown a second head.

Bucky watched Duggin leave, hands still bunched in fists. He’d take care of that asshole later. Right now Bucky needed to get Steve home and cleaned up before his ma saw him and had a heart attack. On his fucking birthday. Jesus. 

When Duggin was out of sight, Bucky dropped down to his knees like his strings had been cut and rolled Steve’s slack form to him. “Fucking hell, Stevie,” Bucky groused, tenderly pushing Steve’s hair back to catalogue the damage his friend had sustained.

It wasn’t his worst, not by far, but it wasn’t nothing either. He’d be sporting that shiner for a week at least and he’d been lucky Duggin hadn’t punched out any of his teeth. With a heavy sigh, Bucky smacked Steve’s cheek lightly until his friend’s familiar blue eyes fluttered open. 

“Hey there, jerk,” Bucky intoned lightly, forcing an easy smile he sure as hell wasn’t feeling.

“Your right hook’s getting better,” Steve commented hoarsely before sitting up and spitting out a mouthful of blood. He must have cut his cheek open on his teeth during the fight. Bucky sincerely hoped it hadn’t been from his punch. 

“Think you can make it back holding on to me?” he asked, already helping Steve ease into standing. 

Steve groaned, a point in favor of the ribs Duggin had been kicking relentlessly before Bucky showed up. “I could of taken him, Bucky, honest.”

“Uh-huh,” Bucky agreed, “had ‘em on the ropes, pal, I saw. But cut me some slack, yeah? It’s your birthday and I was hoping we’d get home in time to eat the cake your ma managed to make. Couldn’t sit around waiting all afternoon while you showed Dozer McDuggin what’s what.”

He anchored Steve to his side and they made the familiar slow trek back to Steve’s place. Steve didn’t say a word until they were safely ensconced in his bedroom, Bucky helping him peel off his shirt and pull out the first aid kit they kept stowed secretly beneath Steve’s bed. 

“He was harassing Old Mrs. Wu, saying she belonged working in a rice paddy, not in Brooklyn,” Steve explained, wincing as Bucky wrapped his ribs tightly and expertly. 

“He’s an asshole, Steve, everybody knows that, even Mrs. Wu, I’m sure. But buddy, really, on your goddamn birthday? Your ma is going to be right pissed with you,” Bucky warned. 

He reached up to start dabbing iodine on the cut across Steve’s eyebrow, but Steve’s smaller hand arrested him. Steve was staring up earnestly at Bucky, fingers clutching tight around his wrist. “Thanks, Buck. Thanks for – “

“Don’t fucking thank me for that,” Bucky said harshly, tugging out of Steve’s grip and not even feeling that bad when Steve hissed at the iodine pressing into his cut. “Can’t you just hold back your fights until I’m there with you?”

“You know I don’t start ‘em on purpose,” Steve said, a whine creeping into his words.

Bucky huffed a sigh because he did know that. “Still, Steve, you gotta know, I’ll beat the shit outta any asshole with you, but I fucking hate coming around the corner to see you getting beat to hell. Especially on your damn birthday.”

“Shut up about my birthday already, hell, Bucky,” Steve said, bursting into choked laughter, wincing as it flared up the pain in his ribs. “You’d think it was a damn national holiday or something.”

“It is! You complete mook! Fourth of fucking July and you’re out there getting your little red, white, and blue ass kicked around by trash like Dozer McDuggin.” Bucky frowned in disgust. He glanced down to find Steve staring bespottedly up at him and thought it best to nip that right in the bud. “I ate your last damn popsicle.”

“Bucky!” Steve cried in something akin to real outrage and the entire Dozer McDuggin affair was forgotten. At least it was for Steve. 

The memory fuzzed for a moment then pulled back in sharp clarity. Bucky lurking outside Duggin’s place all the next night until the giant asshole came swaggering out. Bucky grabbed him by the shirt and dragged him into an alley next to the house. In the dim light of night, he’d dodged Duggin’s wildly placed blow easily. 

“The fuck, Barnes?” Duggin growled. 

“You ever fucking even think about laying a finger of Steve Rogers and I swear to god, Duggin, I will fucking end you,” Bucky threatened. He didn’t leave time for Duggin to put in a well timed smartass remark, just cracked him as hard across the jaw as he could, feeling grossly pleased when Duggin went down like a pile of bricks, big bulky body slumped across the dirty grass of the alley.

Bucky lifted his split knuckles in a fist like the winner of a boxing match before stepping over Duggin’s unconscious form, kicking him solid in the ribs as he did so. Fucking piece of shit, on Steve’s goddamn birthday.

XxXxX

The room was dark and would have been quiet were it not for Bucky’s panting breaths. Of course, now that the memory had played out, his headache was back and with a vengeance. He lay there, on the cold concrete, gasping for air, and trying to sort through the mess that he called his thoughts.

Bucky had thought the history books were wrong, the biographies written by incompetent people who didn’t understand that there was a person named Bucky Barnes and another named Steve Rogers. He was starting to think that he was the one who hadn’t understood. 

Steve chased Bucky down like he wasn’t ever going to stop. Bucky had thought Steve was an idiot with a death wish. Maybe he was wrong about that as well. There was a reason his memories only sprung to life with Steve. Bucky couldn’t work it out, not like this, a person still trying to figure out who the hell they were. He couldn’t work it out by himself because Bucky Barnes had always known himself in relation to Steve Rogers. 

There was no line of Bucky’s history that didn’t run in some parallel direction with Steve’s. Bucky had never understood why Hydra worked so hard to burn out anything that resembled a memory, he was already pressed so hard under their thumb it was nearly impossible to remember that he could breathe some days. What more could they have gained from erasing his past?

The answer, obviously, was Steve. Erase Steve and they could erase most of Bucky too. They couldn’t make Bucky forget he was a person, not entirely, but they could make him forget who that person was. Without Steve, Bucky was the Weapon, the Asset, the Winter Soldier. The moment Steve came back, all of that unraveled. 

So that was the choice then. Bucky could be one of two people. He could try to relearn how to be Bucky Barnes, if he was willing to chase after Steve like Steve had been chasing after him. Or he could be someone new. Someone without Steve. Someone with Bucky’s face but not his history. 

Bucky tapped his metal fingers against his chest, staring up at the dank cement ceiling. With his free hand, he reached across the scant space to his duffel bag. A few moments of rifling later, Bucky lifted the burner phone up in front of his face. He titled his head to the side, thumbed to the contacts and the only number it held. 

“Dozer McDuggin was always a piece of fucking trash,” Bucky declared when the call was answered. 

Silence followed this, Bucky waited it out patiently. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Buck,” Steve cursed worriedly. “What the hell are you talking about?” 

Bucky offered no explanation. He wasn’t going to play ‘guess the memory’ by himself. This was a major fucking achievement on his part and he wanted Steve to appreciate it properly. It took a while, but eventually the human version of the American flag puzzled it out. “Dozer McDuggin? That meathead from two blocks over?”

Bucky provided a vaguely affirmative sound. He wanted Steve to prove the memory was real. It was the first one he had regained on his own, more or less, in a long time and he needed that validation. 

“Hell,” Steve scoffed. “That was what? ’32?” 

“You’d know better than me,” Bucky allowed.

Steve huffed out a breath. “Yeah, sure. Dozer . . . I don’t really remember – oh, hell, Bucky! Of all the crap you could remember, you pick that?”

Bucky rolled his eyes at his musty ceiling. “Not sure I’m picking anything, pal.”

“Right, of course,” Steve acquiesced. “Well, hell, Dozer was being a real jerk to Old Mrs. Wu and we got into it. I was getting beat something awful, not the worst I’d had, of course, but bad enough to leave me hurting for days after, then you showed up. Looked like St. Michael, I swear, swooping in to avenge this dumbass kid from Brooklyn. You scared the hell out of Dozer, remember? Guy never even sent a funny look in my direction after that, whatever you did.” 

There was warmth in Steve’s voice, like the memory wasn’t a bad one for him, as much as he’d protested Bucky remembering it in the first place. That surprised Bucky, or no, it didn’t surprise him because Steve was an idiot. He didn’t need his memory to know that. So Bucky didn’t feel any qualms about clearing up why exactly Dozer McDuggin practically shit a brick anytime Bucky was in his vicinity. 

“Night after you birthday, I showed up at his house, dragged him in the back alley with me and socked him square in the jaw. Sent him down and out. Told him if he ever fucked with you again I’d kill him.”

Bucky pressed the phone tighter to his ear, determined to hear exactly how Steve felt about this. To hear the repulsion Steve would feel, because it had to be there. Bucky had to be remembering it wrong, because that was something the Asset would have done, not Bucky Barnes.

Only Steve didn’t sound the slightest bit perturbed. In fact, he seemed rather pleased. “Yeah, well, I figured it was something like that. He was missing one of his bottom teeth after that. I assumed he hadn’t walked into a door like he claimed and you always got real shifty when the kids at school brought it up.” 

Bucky’s eyes popped back open and he hadn’t even realized he’d closed them. “So you weren’t kidding then. I just kicked the crap out of you on occasion to keep you from more serious injury?”

Steve hummed in agreement. “Told you, Buck, wasn’t nothing I couldn’t take. I was punk ass kid scrapping by as best I could and sometimes the only way you could help me was to scrap by too.”

Bucky pin-wheeled this through his thoughts. He wondered if it was something Hydra had known about. Had they realized that it was programmed into Bucky’s very soul that he would do anything to protect Steve? Anything at all? That it wouldn’t matter how hard they tried to burn Steve out, Bucky would go plunging down after him, drag Steve gasping and choking to the shore?

If they had, they had been more than just negligent to send him on that final mission. They had been utterly reckless. Bucky figured they believed Project Insight would take care of any problems their Weapon might not be able to fix, blasting people into scorch marks, one of those would have been labeled Steve Rogers. Wouldn’t have mattered if Bucky could finish Steve off or not.

But mostly, Bucky thought Hydra hadn’t known. They hadn’t known anything about Bucky, only that Steve was his compass and they had tried to rip that out of him and replace it with a new sort of loyalty. Except they had wanted a loyal machine and Bucky had always been too stubborn to believe the metal on his arm extended to his soul. 

“Where are you at now, Bucky?” Steve asked, his voice gentled like he was afraid of startling Bucky into hanging up.

“A shithole,” Bucky confided easily. It didn’t matter, Steve would find him if he wanted to. Steve always found him. The history books said so. And Bucky always found him right back. 

“You got my pretty pictures up on your wall in this shithole too? Gotta tell you, Buck, gonna give a guy a complex with the kind of attention your paying to my face smeared across every newspaper and magazine.”

“Pretty face,” Bucky scoffed, the ego on this guy. “I’ve seen pretty faces, Rogers, and yours ain’t ever been one of them.”

Steve’s breath of laughter was surprising and to Bucky’s minute horror, also welcome. “Now don’t be jealous, Buck. I know they don’t have you on every supermarket shelf, but that’s just because you’re going around like you let something die on top of your head.”

Bucky choked out a sound and parsed out a second later that it was a snort of laughter. He blinked, shook off his surprise, and let his facial muscles approximate a smile. “I’ve seen your costume, Rogers, at least I’m not running around looking like a very patriotic popsicle.”

“Bucky!” His name came out as a whine and it sent a pleasant sensation through Bucky. Which of course was inconvenient, since talking to Steve wasn’t supposed to make him wish they were in the same room instead of connected by airwaves. 

“The magazines all think you’re fucking Natasha,” is what came out of Bucky’s mouth instead of anything that remotely made sense because apparently self-preservation also led him to mortification. 

Steve’s silence was stony, followed by an equally grave, “It wouldn’t be any of their business even if it was true.”

“Remember – “ the word fell out of his mouth before Bucky realized what he was saying. Bucky froze, his heart lurching ahead of the panic that one word caused.

Steve breathed down the line, “Bucky?”

Bucky felt like the world was spinning into disarray all around him. His headache ramped up until it was thudding against his temples, but his lips kept moving, his lungs pushing out the words, “Remember how terrible you were on camera?”

“I wasn’t,” Steve defended as if by default, “I was their best war bond seller.”

“Not that,” Bucky’s mouth said, because sure as shit, it wasn’t Bucky saying this crap. His body had finally entered its last phase, his senses falling to pieces, working without his control. “The ones they took in war. Where you’d be looking at your dumb Peggy Carter compass and you’d get all flustered that they’d caught you at it again. Fucking fell asleep staring at that thing, you big lug.”

And Jesus, Bucky was gasping, dragging air into his lungs like it was gonna run out. His heart was beating up a storm, his hearing ringing in and out, and still, still his fucking mouth was moving. “Remember?”

“Yeah,” Steve said swiftly, with complete confidence and assertion. It was for his benefit, Bucky knew. Steve sounded his most confident, his most assured when he was scared shitless and trying not to let Bucky see it. “Yeah, well, you were the one who stole the picture for me – remember?”

And shit. Shit. He did. Bucky fucking remembered that. 

After listening to Steve pine after Peggy for two weeks following their return from Zola’s torture hell, Bucky had thought to fucking hell with it, and he’d broken into her quarters. Didn’t even care about getting caught, really, anything to make Steve shut up about Carter for two damn seconds so Bucky could just grab onto Steve’s newer, broader shoulders and soak up that his best friend was here, alive, and healthy for the first time ever, looking like a goddamn Greek god.

It’d been in with some papers on her desk, the photo. Peggy in a glossy black and white, listening to Colonel Philips give another depressing speech, as was his forte. Bucky had picked up the picture, ripped it clean in half, and dumped Philips into the trash on his way back to Steve. 

He’d slipped the picture into his friend’s hand and said, “Let’s go, Rogers.”

In Steve’s tent, the guy had spent a good five minutes gawking over the photo, fretting about the trouble Bucky could get in for taking it. Bucky hadn’t listened to a word. He’d shoved Steve’s chair around so he was facing Bucky, then he’d sunk to his knees between his friend’s legs and said, “I’m with you to the end of the fucking line, Rogers.” 

Steve had started, eyes skittering down to Bucky’s. “You okay, Buck?” he’d asked all tentative like. 

“Not even fucking close,” Bucky had admitted, then he grabbed Steve’s big dumb face between his hands and taken to re-memorizing what his best friend looked like. 

He wasn’t gonna need a picture in his compass like Steve, he was going to fall asleep every night with his guy’s image stuck to his eyelids, he was going go to his death seeing every single line and curve of Steve’s face, he was going know this face the next time he woke up in a torture chamber. Nothing and nobody was going to stop him. 

Of course, it hadn’t worked out that way. Bucky blinked himself back to reality, forcing his heartbeat down to a level that didn’t leave him nauseous. “Yeah, Steve, I remember,” Bucky evened out his voice as he sat up, grinding his freehand into the broken pieces of cement that littered the floor.

“You ever coming back to me?” Steve asked stiltedly. 

The corner of Bucky’s mouth ticked up, trying and failing for a smile. Steve Rogers, the patriotic face of misplaced and idiotic hope. “Bits and pieces, pal.”

“Told you I don’t care about that, Bucky. I’m asking if you’re coming back?” When Bucky didn’t offer an immediate response, Steve continued, “I’ve chased you across the world more than once in this lifetime and I can keep doing it. Thing is, I don’t want to. I don’t want to chase you if you don’t want to be found. I don’t want to be another person hunting you. I want – I just want you to be with me, Bucky.” 

Like Bucky said, Stars and Stripes was nothing if not an idiot filled with utterly unreasonable hope. Bucky hung up the phone before crushing it to shit beneath the heavy heel of his boot.

XxXxX

So, Bucky wasn’t omnipresent and had sort of failed by giving up on Hydra before the end of all time. Since, after all, cockroaches never died. It kind of made sense, since the more shards of his life Bucky remembered the more jumbled he became, little slips were bound to happen. He hadn’t been at the top of his game in a while and maybe that was what Hydra had been waiting for.

Either way, Bucky was sleeping the sleep of the dreamless when the crunch of gravel and glass woke him. He rolled upright, one hand on the butt of his preferred gun and the other wrapped around the hilt of his favorite knife. He crept to the broken door that gave way to his room and listened intently.

Perhaps it was because Hydra was itself in shambles, but the two octopus patch wearing recruits making their entirely not stealthy way towards him left Bucky deeply unimpressed. Granted, even as the Winter Soldier, the Asset, the Weapon, Bucky had been aware that he was considered the best Hydra had, so naturally all other agents were going to be lacking in badassery and overall kill shots. 

As the pair made their way towards Bucky’s position, he tucked his knife back into his Kevlar vest, which he had taken to wearing for warmth in the useless power plant. He cocked his gun and squeezed the trigger twice. The two Hydra members dropped dead and kindly donated their own blood to the mess of the power plant floor. 

As he stood up, Bucky holstered his gun, scooped his duffel bag up, and made for the shattered glass window down the hallway. Passing the former Hydra agents, Bucky stooped to grab the secured briefcase the shorter one had been carrying, then he leapt calmly out the window, rolling as he hit the ground before making a run for it out of the power plant’s complex. 

It stood to reason that where one Hydra agent roamed, others were sure to follow. It wasn’t that Bucky didn’t think he could take them, he was certain he could, even with the constant migraine he was rolling with these days. Still there was no reason to be shot at when he had the chance to clear out before anyone from Hydra realized he was still alive. After all, he was done lying in wait.

XxXxX

It had been weeks since Bucky came to the power plant, two weeks since he called Steve. Bucky knew he was looking deranged at best, completely fucking gone at worst. He’d dragged on the worn out leather jacket he’d traded a homeless man for in exchange for a couple of bottles of water and a fistful of cash. So Bucky realized he was lucky he had picked this nothing town where no one raised an eyebrow at his disheveled state of filth when he shouldered his way into the diner on the very outskirts of the town lines.

The waitress just nudged the slice of apple pie Bucky had ordered in his direction and gave a subtle nod toward the bathroom, like she thought he might need a reminder to wash his hands before eating. Probably she feared the grim he left on the fork would be permanent. Honestly, Bucky thought she probably wasn’t wrong.

Bucky took the hint. He spent a good five minutes scrubbing the dirt from his hands and tangled his mess of hair into a ratty bun at the nape of his neck before shoving his whole face under the faucet. He came away looking a more neutral shade of skuzzy. 

Then he sat down at his table and ate his goddamn pie. Then he chugged a glass of milk. Then he grimaced, because milk was disgusting. Why had he ordered milk? There were calcium pills in his goddamn duffel for a reason.

Having eaten something other than a cardboard protein bar for the first time since Steve’s soup, Bucky turned to the task of hoisting the locked briefcase onto the plastic top of the back booth he was seated at. Using all the subtly a metal arm concealed only by the sleeve of a leather jacket and a fingerless glove could afford, Bucky smashed the lock off, quickly sweeping the scraps of metal to the floor. 

He glanced up to find the waitress hovering a noticeable distance away. He chose to believe her look of awe was directed at his newly adjacent to clean appearance rather than his lock busting skills. 

“You want another piece of pie?” she drawled, popping her gum for good measure. 

Right then. So Bucky’s human contact skills were unsurprisingly more off base than he had realized. She was awed by him devouring the piece of pie in under three minutes and spitting a mouthful of milk across the table top. “Yeah. Peach this time?”

She nodded, hip pushing off the counter she’d been resting on, and sashayed her way around to the order window. Bucky rolled his eyes at himself since the Winter Soldier had been rather brag worthy in his ability to go unnoticed. Apparently that wasn’t a skill that had the ability to survive in Bucky Barnes. At least he still had the metal shredding arm. 

Bucky easily opened the case and quickly rifled through the contents. They were honestly pathetic. Bucky would have despaired for the Hydra organization had he not hated them quite so much. There was a file on Bucky, left purposefully vague lest it fall into the wrong hands and Bucky’s values as the Weapon, the Asset, or the Winter Soldier be revealed. 

There was also a file on Steve. A file composed of the same lame-ass citation worthy sources Bucky himself had been following, i.e. newspaper clippings, magazine articles, paparazzi photos, and random prints from the various biographies done on Steve since being fished out of the ice. 

Oh how the Red Skull would have wept. 

The waitress laid Bucky’s new plate of pie down with a clank. She eyed the myriad of Steve related paraphernalia in his hands and smirked. “You into Red, White, and Blue?”

Bucky chose to tilt his head rather than answer. The waitress snorted. “I mean, the boy has got a jawline to give a girl daydreams, but he’s what? Pushing up on one hundred.” She wrinkled her nose. “Thanks, but I’d prefer Playboy Bunnies over Hugh Hefner.” 

Every reference went over Bucky’s head. Bucky didn’t care. He could speak over seven languages, what did he care if he had missed out on pop culture references? “Thought he was twenty-six when he got frozen?”

“Uh, yeah, in the 1940s. He was down there for, what, seventy years. He’s practically a fossil, which whatever, that’s cool if you’re into that sort of thing.” She eyed Bucky deliberately.

Which, reasonable, seeing as Bucky was holding handfuls of pictures of Steve in his completely bizarre briefcase, while looking like a dirty vagrant with a serious Steve Rogers obsession and a penchant for pie. Alright then, moving on. “You got a pay phone in this place?”

The waitress rolled her eyes, apparently unimpressed that Bucky wasn’t willing to discuss his Steve Rogers addiction with her. “Over there.” She pointed a bright pink nail in the direction of the newspaper reciprocals that dotted the corner of the diner’s cracked and weed strewn sidewalk. 

Bucky nodded his thanks, waited until the waitress moved back to leaning on the counter, and scarfed down his second piece of pie. When he was finished, he left money on the table, and walked out to the corner with the briefcase in hand. The phone booth he found was just behind the diner in the alley that housed the dumpster. 

He’d lived through worse smells. Bucky popped two quarters into the machine and waited while it connected him. “Hydra’s limping along,” he informed Steve when the line was picked up.

“Would it kill you to open with actual greetings one of these times? Like, ‘hello,’ ‘hi,’ ‘hey,’ – “

“Bonjour, ni hao, howdy,” Bucky drawled, fighting down a smile. Now was not a time for smiling. This was serious if somewhat underwhelming business.

Steve’s laughter rolled down the line, warming Bucky in places he had truly forgotten could be warmed. Places in his soul that he had forgotten existed at all. Places that were probably Steve shaped. So much for not smiling.

“Right, okay. Hey, Bucky. Start again?”

“Hydra, they paid me a visit at my latest accommodations, which even you haven’t done and they didn’t even do me the courtesy of bringing a thermos of soup. However, I was able to relieve them of the briefcase that was weighing them down.”

“I assume that while you are in a bantering mood, they are not?” Steve asked.

“They’re dead, if that’s what you mean,” Bucky answered bluntly. There was no point in hiding it. Bucky didn’t feel bad about it. It was kill or get killed and Bucky found out a long time ago where he fell on that spectrum. 

“What’s in the briefcase?” Steve asked and something like relief settled on Bucky’s shoulders. He hadn’t been aware he was worried about Steve judging him where he wouldn’t judge himself. But Steve hadn’t, if anything, he seemed less than broken up about two more dead Hydra agents, which Bucky assumed he should have realized.

“Lots of pretty pictures of you and a rather morbid but lacking documentary on me.” Bucky hunched his shoulders, eyes scanning the empty parking lot of the diner and the equally barren alley. 

“Well, like I said, I’m a popular guy. Anything I should be concerned about? My affinity for Beethoven over Mozart?”

A memory popped too bright and too loud in Bucky’s mind. Steve listening to a record of Beethoven’s ninth symphony at deafening levels because he never could hear good out of his left ear and drawing rapid pictures of his favorite places in New York, all the while shouting a lecture at Bucky about why Beethoven was his favorite composer over Mozart.

Bucky gasped a breath, forcing open his eyes which he didn’t know he had shut. The waitress’s face was mashed against the inside of the glass where she was apparently spying on the suspicious pie eating Steve Rogers fanatic.

“Yeah, well, it ain’t Mozart’s fault he wasn’t deaf, Stevie. That’s just preferential treatment on your part for those with similar shared life experiences,” Bucky coughed out the words which should have come easily. That was relearning though, the familiar gears grinding but needing to cut through the layers of rust first. 

Steve breathed out a laugh. “So you’re saying the files were, in fact, about my musical tastes?”

“Nah, Hydra’s just keeping tabs on you, same as they always have I would suspect. Just wanted you to know they’re on the move. They could be looking for me or it could have been coincidence since I was hanging out at one of their locations.”

“Bucky,” Steve said, his tone serious for the first time in their conversation, “you don’t have to go after them alone. You have to know this is a fight I would be more than willing to help you with.”

“Didn’t mean to make it a fight. I was just curious to see if the final head had been cut off with Pierce. Apparently not. Guess they really are like a Hydra, even if they got it confused with the octopus.” 

“Easy mistake to make,” Steve allowed, “I mean tentacles, multiple heads, tomato tamato, right?”

Bucky grimaced through a grin. “Your jokes are awful, Steve.”

“Doesn’t mean you don’t like them,” his friend quipped.

Bucky sighed, eyes going back to the waitress who was practically licking the glass. He imagined she’d completely lose it if she knew Bucky was actually on the phone with Steve right now. “I gotta go, Stevie. Watch after yourself, yeah?”

“Course, Buck. Course.” And with a sigh, Steve hung up.

Bucky spent a few moments pantomiming a conversation for the waitress’s sake. Could be Bucky was the most exciting thing that happened to her all day, he didn’t want to deprive the lady of that. When he was finished, he hung up and carried the briefcase to the dumpster where he proceeded to light all of the contents on fire before dumping them inside. He waited until the flames had died down and all that remained were the charred remains of a once reasonably nice looking briefcase. 

Then Bucky waltzed back into the diner, ordered his third slice of pie, cherry this time, and asked the waitress where, exactly, he could go for a cheap hair cut.

XxXxX

For being the most recognized man in a leotard that America had, Steve had shitty fucking security on his apartment. As in, it was a true American embarrassment what little effort Bucky had had to exert to not only find Steve’s address, but ease himself through a window without even breaking the lock. A disgrace really.

Or, you know, Bucky was just that fucking good at B and Es. Either way, Bucky ditched his duffel bag by Steve’s balcony window and commenced on his walkthrough. He’d been curious for a while, ever since acquiring and subsequently abandoning his three legged chair and table ensemble, what exactly Captain America’s own humble abode would look like. 

Bucky was thoroughly disappointed to find that the walls were not, in fact, covered by impossibly large American flag murals. He’d been hoping for at least a framed picture of a bald eagle or two, possibly chronological portraits of the presidents lining the hallway to the bedroom. 

Steve’s apartment lived up to exactly none of these expectations. In fact, the place was almost depressingly lacking in character. The walls were a mellow cream, the only pictures hanging up were ones Steve had drawn of New York City, both in its original form circa the 1920s and 30s as well as the modern rendition. 

Bucky absolutely ignored his urge to rip the 1920s one from the wall and stuff it away in his duffel bag. Yeah, he’d broken into the place, but he hadn’t come for any actual stealing. 

The carpet was a grey fiber thing that Bucky assumed was for masking any possible bloodstains or other bodily fluids that might eventually end up staining it. The living room had a simple couch with a coffee table, some of Steve’s art stuff spread across the oak surface. In the corner, a preposterously small tv held court. 

Rolling his eyes at the mundaneness of it all, even as his traitor self snuck glances back at Steve’s pictures, Bucky worked his way to Steve’s bedroom. With absolutely no compunction, Bucky kicked the door open with the toe of his boot. It swung inward without even a squeak of its hinges. 

The bedroom was as equally mind-numbingly white as the living room and hallway before it. It was only Steve’s cluttered dresser and nightstand that told a different story. Both surfaces were littered, positively crowded and overflowing, with faded photographs in new picture frames. Looking at them made the sides of the room warp in at impossible angles, so Bucky hastily looked away. He’d picked up a few faces though. Peggy Carter. His own. Steve’s. The Howling Commandos. The Barnes family. Steve and his ma. 

Jesus. Bucky sat down heavily on the edge of Steve’s neatly made bed, his stomach turning violently. All those memories, just laid out there to haunt Steve every second he was in this room. Bucky pressed his metal fingers to his temples, trying to fight off the migraine the photographs had sparked. 

Still. It wasn’t necessarily different than the mosaic of pictures and articles Bucky had plastered to his own walls. They were both trying to remember, after all, only Steve had a much less questionable way of going about it. Bucky risked another glance at the pictures, finding the one that showed Steve and Bucky with their arms around each other’s shoulders. That, that he might steal and not even feel sorry about. Maybe he’d replace it with a picture of a proud bald eagle soaring over a rippling American flag, just so Steve wouldn’t feel jipped on the trade. 

Having nothing better to do than wait for Steve to get back from his weekly Wednesday night at the boxing club, Bucky kicked off his boots and relaxed back on Steve’s bed. It was horrendously comfortable, like Bucky might decide to never get off it again. He would become the assassin who only killed people if they bothered to enter Steve’s bedroom. It would be great. Steve was a sap, he would definitely donate his bed to Bucky if that meant Bucky was going to hang around in his apartment. 

With a completely justified and self-satisfied smirk, Bucky closed his eyes and allowed himself to drift off into what he was sure people with more normal lives than him called a nap.

XxXxX

The sound of the hallway door opening and shutting from the stairwell woke Bucky. He rolled out of Steve’s bed, stretching his arms over his head as he did so, and shoved his feet back into his boots. As he passed out the door, he scooped the picture of Steve and him into his pocket. He’d drop off Steve’s bald eagle replacement whenever he had a chance.

Placing himself within the shadows of Steve’s living room, Bucky patiently waited for the front door to open. When it did, it revealed a perspiring Steve lugging his gym bag over his shoulder. It took about twenty seconds for Steve to notice Bucky which equated to ten more seconds that Bucky would have needed to shoot him. 

Heaven and hell. America’s greatest hero was one lazy assassin away from a very timely death, you know, if you counted the seventy odd years he’d spent frozen. Ninety-six was an entirely reasonable age to die at. One might even say Steve was living well past his prime. Of course, Bucky would then be forced to start some serious shit with such a person since Bucky had come to the conclusion that he alone was allowed to talk trash about Steven Grant Rogers. 

“Bucky?” Steve asked, his mouth gaping open unattractively as the duffel fell from his limp fingers with an audible thud. 

“Decided to check out your digs,” Bucky explained nonchalantly, allowing his eyes to roam the living room. “I’m completely disappointed in your lack of flags and mini statues of the lady of liberty.”

Steve grinned, kicking his door shut with the back of his sneaker and stepping easily over his dropped gym bag. “Fuck you, my house is completely zen.”

Bucky’s mouth tugged up in a grin that he was aware showed too many teeth but he hadn’t really figured out how to fix that yet. “For being America’s favorite emblem of red, white, and blue, your house is only adhering to one of those color schemes.”

“My bathroom has blue towels,” Steve defended as he crossed the rest of the space to stand in front of Bucky. 

“Saw in the papers you took out one of the remaining sub-sects of Hydra, seems they were holing up in an abandoned power plant in Maine?” Bucky lifted his eyebrows expectantly.

Steve rolled his eyes. “Yeah, it was crazy. I followed a tip from this cranky squatter I’m friends with. Good thing I’d traced his calls weeks before the tip.”

“Cranky squatter,” Bucky groused, grabbing Steve by his collar and yanking Steve way past his own person bubble and firmly into intimate territory. “You don’t even have an American flag comforter, Steve, what am I supposed to think here? I mean, I’ve got serious brain damage, and I’m thinking I’m coming to break into the house of Captain America and instead I’m in the house of a nostalgic artist with a bend towards minimalist decorating?” Bucky quirked his head to the side and glared at Steve.

“Captain America isn’t Steve Rogers, my bed spread can be whatever I want it to,” Steve argued.

And Bucky got that, finally. Steve Rogers might be Captain America, but Captain America was not Steve Rogers. Captain America was a label, just like the Weapon, the Asset, and the Winter Soldier. Different connotations, sure, but a label all the same. Didn’t mean Bucky couldn’t tease him about it though. 

“You hiding the stars and stripes sheets for when you bring home your best girl?”

“Or best guy,” Steve said as his gaze drifted up Bucky. “Your hair?” Steve squinted. “You actually cut it? I thought you were just gonna go with it until you looked like Thor’s ragtag cousin.”

Bucky hacked out a laugh; the sound was improving slowly the more often it happened. It no longer sounded as if he was gargling gravel and shards of glass, so, improvement. “Was getting hard to hitch a ride, thought a cleanup might improve the speed of my mobility.”

Steve smirked. “Don’t lie, Buck. You just want the papers to take your picture half as often as they take mine.”

Bucky flashed too many teeth again but since it only made Steve’s smirk round into a real smile he counted it as a win just the same. “So I was talking to this patriotic asshole I know, real loser, horribly optimistic, always running with the wrong crowd, and this jerk, get this, he tells me he wants to go take down the remaining heads of Hydra with me. Ain’t that the stupidest shit you’ve ever heard?”

Steve shoved Bucky’s shoulder but swayed forward to maintain their shared space. “Nah, the stupidest shit I’ve heard is this master assassin I know breaking into Captain America’s house to ask him to partner up on destroying the remains of an evil organization that should have died in the 1940s. What kind of loser does that?”

“Thought you weren’t Captain America, thought you were Steve Rogers?” Bucky challenged, except it came out a little too desperate. 

“I am so fucking glad you came back, Buck,” Steve exhaled, his smiling softening into something that was disgustingly sincere.

It made Bucky feel like squirming but he refused to give into the impulse. “Who said I came back? I might have just dropped in to steal shit out of your fridge then vanish back into the darkness of the night.”

Steve took a step back, one long arm gesturing towards his kitchen. “Then go ahead, just, you know, have the decency of promising a guy you’ll drop in again some other time, none of this once and done crap.” 

Bucky tugged on Steve’s shoulder to pull him back in close. His metal hand twitched uncomfortably. “I’m going to tell you things you don’t want to hear, but if you ever want me gracing your doorstep again, you’re going to need to listen to them, okay?”

Steve nodded dutifully then waited silently, his left hand reaching out to uncurl Bucky’s metal fingers from the fist they’d made. “Lay it on me, Buck,” he said, head tipped to the side with a self-deprecating smirk.

Bucky met Steve’s look head on, took a breath and opened his mouth. He had a lot to say, not much of it very nice. What he did not expect in any way, shape, or form, was to be utterly speechless. He stood there, gaping like an idiotic fish, eyes running endlessly over Steve’s face, because he was standing there, inches away and – and - 

“Fuck, I missed you, Steve.”

Steve’s smile cracked into something heart wrenching as he tentatively squeezed Bucky’s metal fist in his hand. “Yeah, I fucking missed you too, Bucky.”

Bucky’s body capsized forward, his arms shooting out to wrap around Steve in a legitimately bone crushing hug. He shoved his face as hard as he could into the bend between Steve’s shoulder and neck. Steve wrapped Bucky up just as tightly in his arms, cheek pressing hard against the crown of Bucky’s head. “You’re a total asshole for taking this long to come back to me, Buck.”

Bucky huffed because it wasn’t entirely untrue. “I had shit to figure out,” Bucky protested, face dug deep into Steve’s collar bone. 

“Yeah, well, you done figuring it out? Because I saw the last place you were shacking up in and you were being kind by referring to it as a shithole. It was a goddamn abandoned power plant, Bucky. You’re lucky you didn’t get tetanus from that place.” 

Bucky rolled his eyes, even though they were closed and Steve couldn’t see them from his current position. It was the principal, Steve being that stupid. “I’m a master fucking assassin. I’m not getting tetanus from jackshit.”

“That what Hydra told you, because I don’t know if you’ve heard, Bucky, but those guys are evil. With a capital E even.” Steve pressed his face into Bucky’s hair, doing some completely fucking weird sniffing.

“They washed it at the shop,” Bucky defended, knowing he smelled like strawberries and cream. 

Steve laughed. “Smells good, Buck, promise.” 

“What would you know about smelling good? You probably wash your hair with things like freedom and justice.” Bucky wriggled backwards out of Steve’s grasp. 

Steve’s laughed louder, allowing the space Bucky had created between them. “Shut up, jerk.”

“You said you were going to listen, Stevie, can’t listen to shit if you ban me from talking,” Bucky countered. 

Steve made a grand gesture for Bucky to continue and Bucky obligingly flipped him off. Steve’s lips quirked upwards, but he remained silent, so Bucky was willing to let it slide. “I don’t want you thinking this is something it’s not, Steve. I’m never going to be him again; I’m serious when I say your good old pal Bucky Barnes is gone. He’s been gone since he fell off that damn train. I’m sorry you lost your friend, but he’s not coming back.”

Steve waited a patient beat to see if Bucky had more to say but Bucky was waiting for Steve’s reaction. This was make it or break it time here. If Steve couldn’t accept who Bucky was now -

“That’s just so fucking stupid, Buck.”

Bucky took a second to process that as Steve’s brow furrowed downward. Before he could decide what exactly Steve meant, Steve punched Bucky in the shoulder. Hard. As in, Bucky was definitely going to bruise. “Who the hell is asking you to be Bucky Barnes at twenty-four?” Steve challenged.

Bucky glared. “That ain’t what I’m saying, Steve.” 

“Yes, it fucking is,” Steve argued, this time cuffing the backside of Bucky’s head. Which, if this was going to be their final epic fight, Bucky had imagined it being a lot less like pulling pigtails on the playground. 

“I’m asking you to be you, whoever the hell you decide that is, that’s who I’m asking for. You never asked me to be the Steve Rogers you left behind, you took me for who I was, this six foot something, American flag wearing jerk who still loved you more than anything else in this whole fucking world. I’m never going to ask you to be someone you’re not. I don’t care if you ever get all your memories back, they aren’t going to make you Bucky Barnes.”

“Don’t lie, pal,” Bucky shoved Steve’s shoulder. 

“I’m not lying,” Steve said adamantly. “Remembering stuff is a bonus. You’re fucking alive, just as stubborn and as big a pain in my ass as you’ve always been. You beat out literal decades of Hydra torture to remember how much you like razzing me, to remember parts of me. I don’t give a fuck if the picture is complete or not. You are always going to be you, Buck, no matter what.”

Steve hissed out a tense breath between his teeth before grabbing Bucky by the back of his leather jacket and hauling him in close, so that they were sharing the same air. Bucky could have fought off the closeness, but what was the point? This was exactly where he wanted to be. Steve pressed his forehead gently against Bucky’s, blue eyes boring into Bucky’s. “I love you, Bucky. I have loved you since we were five and you shared your peanut butter sandwich with me at lunch and nearly killed me because you didn’t know I was allergic to peanuts.” 

The memory flashed to life for Bucky. Tiny little Steve Rogers, looking more frail than any kid in first grade ever should, his veins a pale blue beneath his translucent skin, both knees scrapped from tackling Josh Garish, a second grader, at recess who had been kicking dirt in Cynthia Landers face. 

“Want some?” Bucky had offered, sitting down next to the kid because Bucky knew a superhero when he saw one. His ma let him listen to the radio on Friday nights and Bucky knew the hero was always the guy sticking up for the girl or boy who was getting stepped on by punks like Josh Garish. 

“Thanks,” Steve had whistled out, his shy smile showing his two front teeth were missing. Bucky envisioned Steve taking a swing to the mouth, both baby teeth wobbling out to be lost in the scuffle as Steve beat up a kid twice his size for stepping on a cat’s tail on purpose. 

Bucky split his sandwich in two, happily handing over the larger half to Steve who took a big bite. Of course, the next minute his whole face turned red and he started choking like he was fit to die. Bucky had gone running for the nearest teacher and they’d gotten Steve squared away eventually, with Bucky sulking outside the first grade classroom, scuffing his shoes on the floor. 

Steve was never going to want to be Bucky’s friend now, not after he’d almost killed the guy. People who tried to kill the hero were the villain. The radio shows said so. Except Steve had coming limping out of the classroom, one arm banded around his ribs as if to keep his lungs working by sheer force, and smiled his gap-toothed smile at Bucky. “I never got to try peanut butter before, on account of being ‘llergic to peanuts. Sure seemed like it tasted good before I started choking.”

Bucky had stared incredulously. This was not how the stories went, the radio had rules and those rules said the villain didn’t get to be friends with the hero. “I almost killed ya,” Bucky felt it incumbent to point out.

“Nah,” Steve disagreed, shrugging his frail shoulders. “Just gave me a run for my money, like my dad says. Sides, it was kind of fun. Eating peanut butter, not choking,” he quickly amended.

And after a few seconds when Steve didn’t take it back, Bucky had grinned, throwing his arm around Steve’s little shoulders and pulling him in close to his side. “Promise tomorrow I’ll bring something new for you to try that won’t kill you. Just gotta tell me what will, ‘kay?”

“Sure,” Steve had said, nodding big and beaming happily which had to mean Bucky wasn’t going to be the villain in their story, he was going to be the hero’s best friend. He liked that. 

The memory receded leaving a low level headache in its place. “You could’ve said you were allergic to peanuts before I gave it to you, wasted half my damn sandwich on your ungrateful ass, Stevie” Bucky grumbled, voice coming out like a chain smoker at sixty. Emotions were not pretty on Bucky, he was realizing this very quickly. His mask of indifference had to be at least ten shades more attractive than the train wreck even a glimmer of real boy emotions made of him.

Or not, if he was going to base his research results on Steve’s smile. “So this brings your memories up to what, a grand total of eleven now?”

“Nah, I’m edging up on twenty, watch out world.” Bucky ground his knuckles into his temple to try and ward off the headache.

“What brings them back?” Steve asked, practically bobbing on his toes, his smile upsettingly bright, like it was giving off enough shine to make Bucky light sensitive.

“You, you big asshole.” Bucky punched Steve solidly with his metal fist, forcing him back a step and allowing Bucky to inch away from that horribly infectious grin.

“That mean you love me too?” Steve teased, but his was searching Bucky’s face, like he was really worried. Which was fucking ridiculous. 

“It’s cripplingly awful,” Bucky confessed dryly. “I think about you, a lot. I want to,” he grit his teeth, “show off my arm and stuff, it’s completely embarrassing.”

Steve was grinning so hard it had to hurt. “I promise I will be utterly impressed, Buck. Honest, I texted Tony Stark about how you ripped the lid off that can of pears.”

“Yeah, well, that was badass. I bet even Tony Robot Stark can’t rip off can lids,” Bucky huffed. 

“Even if he could, it wouldn’t be with the same ‘fuck everyone and everything glare’ you’ve got, Bucky,” Steve offered with something akin to pride. 

That made Bucky smile, a halfway normal one too, where he was showing just the right amount of teeth and the corners of his mouth were pulled up to correct angles. “Idiot. And yeah, I love you too, you asshole.”

“You gonna kiss me then?”

“Kiss you?” Bucky pretended to muse, taping his fingers against his bottom lip.

“Yeah, that’s what you do with people you love, Bucky. You kiss them. Sometimes, you even undress them,” Steve teased, totally disgracing his patriotic, god fearing alter ego, Captain Asshat.

Bucky braced himself for a memory, one with lips pressed close and warm, one with tangled limbs and sweaty brows. Nothing came. Not even a tug of half remembered experience. Nothing, just his headache. He frowned, tilting his head. “We ever do that before?”

“Nope,” Steve said, shaking his head lightly. “Could be a whole new memory, Bucky. One we make together.” 

“Yeah?” he asked, reaching down to trace his thumb over the back of Steve’s hand.

“Yeah.” Steve inclined his face until his lips were brushing Bucky’s. 

Bucky had saved Steve’s life once, after almost being the one to end it. Steve had saved him too, given him his name back and the chance to be someone other than the machine Hydra had tried and failed to create in his place. 

And no, Bucky was never going to be the down home Brooklyn boy he had once been, splitting strawberry jam sandwiches with the tiny slip of a kid named Steve Rogers. He was going to be someone else; the person who had grown up with Steve, gone to war, been captured by Hydra, and lived to tell the tale about it. That’s who he was now, and that was okay with Bucky, had always been okay with Bucky. 

The part he hadn’t expected was Steve being okay with it too. He should have though, and maybe he would have if his memories weren’t scrambled eggs thrown across the span of seventy years of torture. Steve had changed too, after all. He’d come out of the serum a different guy, changed again when Bucky fell off the train, and then some more when he woke up in the twenty-first century.

They could be something new together though. They could remember their past but it wasn’t there to ensnare them. It was there as a reminder that wherever Bucky Barnes was, Steve Rogers was sure to follow. That whoever fucked with Steve was going to end up dealing with Bucky as well. That if there was one thing in this world that Captain America loved more than American flags, it was Bucky fucking Barnes. 

“You’re stuck with me for life, you know that, right, Stevie?” Bucky checked.

Steve gave an exasperated sigh. “I’ve been stuck with you like gum on my shoe since age five, Buck; I’m not gonna get worked up about it now.” 

Bucky narrowed his eyes to slits. “And I’m going to buy you an American flag comforter because it’s a goddamn national crime that you aren’t sleeping wrapped up in the embrace of your beloved country.”

“I’m going to send a selfie of us kissing to the paparazzi,” Steve threatened back.

Bucky glared. He didn’t like threats he couldn’t follow. “I don’t know what the hell that means.”

Steve grinned. “Don’t worry about it. You’ll see it in all the magazines. They’ll publish it as the first glimpse at Captain America’s secret lover.” 

Bucky rolled his eyes, but his right hand came up to mold against the back of Steve’s head, steering him in for a kiss. “To seal the deal,” he explained as he guided Steve toward him.

“’Course,” Steve mumbled, eyes already closing.

“Cuz I love you, Steve, even if you run around looking like a gigantic American condom.” 

Steve burst into laughter that would have totally ruined the kiss if Bucky cared about things like that. He didn’t. He hadn’t kissed anyone in seventy years. He just pressed his lips to Steve’s, sucking Steve’s bottom lip in between his teeth and biting on it playfully.

Steve’s laughter dried up real quick, his free hand dropping to grope completely unpatriotically at Bucky’s ass. Steve slotted their mouths together properly, attempting to kiss the living shit out of Bucky. It seemed like a great plan of action to Bucky. 

This was probably why they let Steve be Captain America. Because it might take him a while to get some traction, but once he got going, Captain American Pie gave it his all. And if there was one thing Bucky had learned from being the Weapon, the Asset, and the Winter Soldier, it was to finish his damn mission. 

So Bucky kept kissing Steve like it was the only thing he planned on doing for the rest of his life. Then he freed his hand from Steve’s embrace and shoved it down the front of Steve’s pants. Metal fingers tracing the shape of Steve’s very impressive hard-on, Bucky pulled off their kiss with a pop. “At least tell me you’re wearing American flag boxers, Stevie?”

Steve fucking was. Incidentally, so was Bucky. Fuck it, Bucky was the former master assassin of Hydra and the current boyfriend of Captain America, he could wear whatever damn boxers he wanted to.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](http://blueeyeschina.tumblr.com)


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